


The Untitled Angel Rescue Team

by violent_ends



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angel Wings, Auction, BAMF Chloe Decker, Beating, Electrocution, Established Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar, F/M, Gen, Hostage Situations, Human Trafficking, Hurt Lucifer, Implied Sexual Content, Kidnapping, Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV) Whump, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Original Character(s), POV Chloe, POV Lucifer, Post-Season/Series 04, Rescue Missions, Torture, Undercover Missions, Whump, Whumptober, Whumptober 2019, Winged Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV), Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-11-24 19:55:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20913227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violent_ends/pseuds/violent_ends
Summary: Lucifer gets kidnapped under mysterious circumstances. The whole gang, now in the know, investigates on his disappearance and discovers that someone is throwing another religious-themed auction, but with much, much higher stakes than Carmen's.[Post-S4; Lucifer is back from Hell; everyone knows]Written for Prompt #25 of Whumptober 2019: Humiliation.





	1. Chapter 1

Lucifer’s head is pounding, which is terribly inconvenient, and also kind of new. It hurts to open his eyes, and the surface under his knees and against his naked back is too hard and too cold. Something presses too tightly around his neck, making it hard to swallow, harder than it should be. Squinting against a light he doesn’t know the source of, he blindly reaches up to tug at it and gasps when his fingers come in contact with a thick, sturdy leather collar.

In a flash, he remembers turning around from the couch at the sound of unexpected footsteps the night before.

_“Did you forget something, love?” he asked, then ten or more men were on him, lifting him off by force and tackling him to the ground._

_He remembers throwing punches, slaps, kicks. Growling, screaming, his eyes burning, maybe his whole face showing, he is not sure._

_A voice, distant and almost bored._

_“Just knock him out, I need him to look immaculate.”_

_A blow to the back of his head, then darkness, and not the one he was the prince of._

A jolt of electricity shoots down his spine from the back of his neck, forcing him to move his hand away from the collar as he flinches in mild pain. Grunting in annoyance and disbelief, he opens his eyes to find himself inside a glass box with a huge lock on the edge of the outer side. The box is in a beige room full of other glass boxes and wooden crates, seemingly with no windows. There is a black man beyond the glass, bald and in his forties, wearing a black suit. He reminds Lucifer of someone, but he can’t say who.

“Hey there, my golden goose" the man grins, tapping one finger against the glass as if Lucifer was a bloody fish inside an aquarium tank. It’s the same voice, from the penthouse.

Lucifer’s eyes burst with crimson fire at the realization and in response to the humiliating nickname, his body lunging forward of its own accord, fists high in the air to try and crash the glass that separates him from the fool who thought he could imprison the Devil himself. But something pulls at his neck from above, cutting the airflow from his throat just in time, and electricity courses through him again, slightly more intense than a moment ago, just before his fists can touch their intended target.

He slumps back down on the transparent floor of the container and coughs as he struggles to breathe again, shocked by the pain. _Did they take the Detective, too?_ The thought terrifies him, his heart beating too fast in his chest, his breath reduced to quickened, panicked gasps. When he looks up, he sees a chain dangling from the top of the box, connecting the back of the collar to it. Like a leash. Chaining him to the spot, like a bad dog that misbehaved or bit its master. He glares down at the man again, outraged, bristling with barely repressed fury.

“Who the hell are you?” he snaps. “What do you want?”  
  
It’s not the smooth, seductive question he usually asks to draw out desires, because frankly he doesn’t have the patience for it. Before answering, the man tilts his head to the side in fascination.

“Money” he says with a smile, ignoring Lucifer’s first question altogether. “Lots and lots and lots of money.”

Despite the situation, Lucifer can’t help but chuckle darkly, almost amusedly. _Humans_.

“That’s it? You want... a _ransom_?” he mocks, shaking his head at the notion of anyone else being asked to pay money to rescue him, when in truth he can’t think of anyone richer than himself in his circle of friends. “You could have asked me back at the penthouse, you poor sod, I would have written you a blank check. Surely you must know I have cash to spare.”

It’s the man’s turn to laugh, apparently – not that Lucifer likes it, but he isn’t liking a lot of things at the moment.

“Ah, yes, I know that but... even you don’t have the kind of money I want.”

Lucifer’s brow furrows in confusion, and the feeling only intensifies when the man lifts one of his hands in front of him to show what he holds in it: a small remote with various buttons, all lined up in a straight, vertical line. Settings.

“Now...” the man speaks again, pressing what seems to be the lowest one at the same time. Lucifer jerks, clenching his jaw against the dim but pinching, buzzing sensation shooting down from the back of the collar.

“How are you doing that?” he asks, increasingly irritated by whatever this game is about. “How are you-"

“Hurting you?” the man smirks, juggling the remote from hand to hand in satisfaction. “Oh, I’m not telling you that. But it’s quite clever, if I may say so myself.”

_Please, not her_, Lucifer thinks, even though he has no idea what else it could be. _Anything but her._

The pleased grin on his captor's face hints at the fact that he knows _something_ is required to weaken him, to make him vulnerable to physical pain. This man knows who Lucifer is, he can feel it. Maybe he just found another way. Maybe Lucifer’s Father decided to throw a new card in the game and provide humans with another weapon to play with his on-and-off immortality like a light switch, just for the fun of it.

“Am I alone here?” he tries, hoping to get an answer that will put his dread about Chloe's involvement to rest. After that, he will focus on how to free himself and give this miscreant the punishment he deserves for messing with him.

“Oh, you’re worried about her? Don’t be, she’s not here" the man reassures him, although Lucifer can’t say he likes the fact that he even _knows_ who Chloe is. “It’s only you and me, for the moment.”

Good. Another way it is, then. _Thank you, Father, just when I thought I was finally catching a break._

The unknown man’s thumb deliberately moves upwards to brush the higher button of the remote, making a show of it; turning the device toward Lucifer to make sure he sees.

“Now, Mr. Morningstar... you’ll open those precious angel wings of yours for me, yes?”

*

Chloe’s foot taps exasperatedly against the elevator’s floor as she makes her way up to the penthouse, something she isn’t supposed to be doing because last night Lucifer said he would meet her in front of Lux to ride to the precinct with her, leaving the Corvette in its private parking spot for the day. Now that orgies are out of the equation he is usually very punctual in the morning, so not finding him on the sidewalk was actually surprising.

“Lucifer, what’s taking you so...” she starts to say when the elevator’s doors open before her, but the last word dies in her throat at the sight that welcomes her.

The main area of the penthouse is a mess of broken glass, upturned furniture and torn leather couches – reminding her of the destruction left behind by the demons when they were looking for the vial that would have helped them raise their own King of Hell, of the total mayhem that eventually forced Lucifer to leave her before he found his way back to her.

“Lucifer?” she calls as panic starts to mount inside her, making her voice shake. She takes out her gun and points it ahead as she slowly walks inside, surveying the scene to look for any sign of Lucifer, or any threat. She tries to avoid touching anything, but small shards of glass still crunch under the soles of her shoes as she passes by what used to be the table. She can see blood on the tiny, irregularly shaped fragments when she dares to glance down, swallowing.

When she reaches the bedroom, she finds Lucifer’s phone on the nightstand, a confirmation of how unreachable he currently is. And when she ends her quick inspection and finds herself standing near the piano, she sees a bigger amount of caked blood on the floor, pooling in one specific spot.

The penthouse is empty, and it occurs to Chloe that it just became a crime scene, of a kidnapping (_Devil_napping) or... she doesn’t want to entertain the possibility of another option. She puts her gun back at her hip and shakily pulls her phone out of her pocket. She stares at the screen for a long moment, ready to call this in and involve the whole force in the search.

But this isn’t a crime scene she can let the police investigate, especially if some of the blood is Lucifer’s, somehow. And it must be: he wouldn’t be missing otherwise. There is a whole new dimension to her life now, a new set of rules to follow when it comes to the celestial creatures she knows. When something happens to them, it relates to the divine, the religious, the spiritual sphere. Because who could have managed to hurt Lucifer in her absence, if not another celestial?

She is not alone in this, though. She knows people who understand, people who can help, chosen and entrusted with the knowledge of the divine for no reason other than how sick and tired she was of keeping secrets from them and dancing around the truth with explanations so ridiculous that sometimes she would laugh at herself for buying them, back in the day.

So Chloe unlocks her phone, opens Whatsapp and taps on the group chat “And Now We Know 😈” (a bit too on the nose, they’re all very aware).

_Lucifer is missing. Come to the penthouse, right now._

After copying and pasting the same message and sending it to Mazikeen and Amenadiel, she tucks her phone back in her pocket and focuses on the evident signs of struggle in front of her eyes, trying to be as detached and professional as she can. Inside her chest, her heart is beating frantically, betraying how scared she is as she contemplates the power someone must possess to win a fight against Lucifer. She’s seen him stop an SUV from speeding away with a bullet hole in his palm, bending a lamp post to keep his ground. She’s seen him hold up a man twice his weight against the wall with one hand. She’s seen him throw a person through a glass wall and shattering it.

Dan and Ella are the first to arrive. As instructed, Ella brought her forensics kit. Her camera and shoulder bag bounce with her steps as she walks in, with Dan trailing behind her. Their eyes widen at the state of the penthouse, before landing on an anguished Chloe sitting on one of the bar stools.

“What the hell happened here?” Dan asks, looking around in shock. “Where is Lucifer?”

“I don’t know" Chloe replies, standing up to join them at the entrance. “I saw him last night when I had dinner here, and the staff of Lux hasn’t seen him since we came up here together. I think someone took him.”

They both blink several times at her.

“How?” Ella asks, while absentmindedly producing a pair of purple gloves from the side pocket of her bag. “I tried slapping him a few weeks ago, that morning when Trixie made you late because she was pretending to have fever or something. It was like high-fiving a brick wall.”

The idea of Lucifer willingly letting Ella slap him across the face to prove a point is the kind of _Lucifer_ thing that usually makes Chloe smile to herself tenderly. Today, it makes her heart ache. _Bloody hell, that hurt! Do it again!_ she remembers from another elevator, another place, another time.

“I don’t know" she finds herself saying, _again_, and it’s frustrating because it’s two questions too many that she can’t answer. “My best guess so far is that it happened right after I left, so I was still in the area?”

This occurred to her only later, while she impatiently waited for her friends to join her. That it might be, to put it bluntly, her fault. At least indirectly. Definitely the hardest part of being with Lucifer, no doubt, and one she doesn’t think she’ll get used to anytime soon. For Lucifer, she knows the hardest thing is her inability to survive the passing of time unchanging and unscathed, like him. They don’t talk about it. There is nothing to talk about.

“Riiight" Ella nods, thinking it over (the inner workings of Lucifer’s powers are still confusing sometimes, especially to the newly initiated of the club). “How does that work, exactly? Is there, like, a specific mile range?”

It’s one of those things that just are the way they are without a reason – if there is one thing she learned out of all this, is that God truly works in mysterious ways – so Chloe doesn’t pretend to know otherwise.

“We haven’t exactly counted, but basically, yes” she shrugs, then pauses as a way worse option nags at her until she has to let it out and share it. “Or maybe this has nothing to do with me. Maybe we’re dealing with some other... celestial... being.”

“Great,” Dan mutters, nervously shifting on the spot, “it’s not like we aren't surrounded by them already.”

Ella smiles fondly at him and shoots him an amused side glance before announcing, “Okay, let me work my magic and see what I can find out.”

With that, she leaves them in front of the elevator and starts taking pictures (Chloe knows they help her reevaluate the data she gathers from a different perspective as time goes by, but she’ll have to remind her to delete them). Then, Ella proceeds to kneel down in different spots to examine particular pieces of furniture or glass, and Chloe sees her collecting samples of the blood she is finding along the way, finishing with the main pool near the piano.

Ella is storing everything back inside the bag when the elevator dings and opens again, this time revealing a frantic Doctor Linda Martin.

“I'm sorry, I came as soon as I could" she apologizes, placing a hand on Chloe’s shoulder for emphasis or most likely to steady herself once she truly takes in what lies in front of her. “So he’s really gone missing?”

Chloe squeezes her hand and smiles sadly at her.

“Yes, and not to get married in Vegas this time, I'm afraid” she finds the strength to quip, earning an equally small smile from the therapist in return. “Where is Amenadiel? We could certainly use his help to look for him.”

Linda’s smile turns into a frown.

“Uhm, he’s, you know... up there” she says, pointing at the ceiling with her index finger. “Apparently he’s on trial for, well, Charlie. No prayers answered until he comes back, he said.”

Everyone’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise at that, although to be fair, Chloe can’t say these new pieces of information truly surprise her anymore. He’s on trial. In Heaven. Sure, okay. Next.

“He could have at least answered my text" she sulks, internally cursing at the realization that her improvised rescue team is already missing one celestial, combined with the fact that the only well-intentioned demon she knows hasn’t replied to her either.

“Something tells me they don’t have good reception up there, Chlo" Dan intervenes, his eyes wide in that way they get when he’s trying to process something but doesn’t want to show it. “So, uhm, Heaven has a... courthouse?”

“Not exactly, I guess it’s more like a big family meeting" Linda explains, shrugging. “He said they might ban him from going for a specific amount of time, nothing too drastic, but they’re going to take forever to decide considering how many they are. Heaven's bureaucracy, am I right?”

“I can’t believe this is our life now" Dan admits in defeat, shaking his head before walking away to help himself to a bottle and a glass from the bar. Chloe can’t really blame him for how these things still shock him: hers was the mother of all freak-outs, after all. But enough with the chit-chat and back to the important stuff. Back to _Lucifer_.

“Ella, what can you tell us?”

Her dark-haired friend and colleague shuffles back to where she started her careful and methodical exploration, her expression somber.

“I think the struggle started there, near the couches” she points with a gloved finger. “Can’t say for sure how many people, but I'm going to guess more than five. The blood is not fresh so it’s possible that it happened last night, right after you left, like you said. I'm going to test it to see if it belongs to Lucifer or someone else that we can try and track down.”

“If it’s his, remember to destroy both the samples and the results” Chloe reminds her. “I don’t even know what they’re going to show but you can’t enter them into the database.”

“I know, I know" Ella reassures her, before gesturing to the stairs that lead to the kitchen. “There is a bit of a gap in the glass pattern, so I think whoever attacked him dragged him away through there. Is there a secondary entrance and exit?”

Chloe shivers at the image Ella just pictured, but tries to stay focused for her sake and most importantly Lucifer’s.

“It’s a service elevator, for the people who refill his kitchen. It connects it to a storage room and pantry at the bottom of the building" she explains. “If they forced their entry from there, it would explain why the staff didn’t see anyone.”

“Okay, I’m going to head down there and take a look" Ella concludes, nodding vigorously. “Don’t worry, girl, we'll find him.”

Chloe nods back, but with less conviction. Ella squeezes her shoulder and leaves the room to do what she said. In the silence that settles, Chloe thinks she can hear Lucifer screaming, struggling, fighting back against men (or something else) who have no faces in her mind yet. They could be demons for all she knows, or some other kind of monster of the dark that she thought couldn’t exist, but does. Vampires? Werewolves? Gremlins? Okay, maybe paranoia is getting the best of her now.

“Maybe we should just call this in" Dan says from the bar, snapping her out of her increasingly worrying fantasies. “Scrub away the blood and file a missing person report.”

Perhaps he’s not wrong, Chloe thinks. After all, there is still a possibility that this might have happened at the hands of humans while Lucifer was temporarily mortal. It seems like a very short window of time, between the moment she left the penthouse and the exact instant when her car was far enough down the road for him to become invulnerable again, but maybe these people really knew what they were doing. Once Lucifer was immortal again, though, how could anyone stand a chance?

“You can’t let any other human deal with this" a new but familiar voice commands, and when they all turn around, they see Maze stepping in from the elevator in one of her usual black leather outfits, hair slick and pulled back in a high braid with small metal hoops along the sides of her head. Chloe can’t help but think about how long it must take her to style her hair so intricately, and she distantly wonders if that’s the reason she is arriving only now.

“Maze! So nice of you to join us" she chastises her (once again) flatmate without much heart in it, but the demon glares at her nonetheless.

“Oh, bite me, Decker, I have a good reason for being late" she snaps, one hand on her hip as the other suddenly holds up her phone. “I was about to text you back when I received a call. An ex-con I brought to justice, a former smuggler who is now on parole, keeps me updated on any weird activity in the city. He’s out of the game but still has a few contacts. After the wing theft, the flaming sword, the Cain fuck-up and your exorcism bullshit, I wanted to keep an eye on anything even remotely related to celestials. I don’t like the idea of being caught by surprise.”

_You don’t like the idea of Lucifer being in danger_, Chloe thinks, but knows better than to say it out loud. Maze doesn’t like to be reminded that despite her emancipation, she’s still the Devil’s keeper, a mission embedded in the core of her very being. Which might turn out to lead them to their lucky break. Chloe suddenly feels so grateful for Mazikeen's foresight that she doesn’t even try to defend herself and reply to the exorcism comment. Not that there’s a lot she can actually say, to be honest.

Without waiting for an answer, Mazikeen taps the screen of her phone and lets them in on a call she must have kept on hold in the meantime, putting it on loudspeaker.

“Tell them what you told me" she orders to the person on the other end of the line. There is a pause.

“Who is them?” asks the voice of her interlocutor, a male voice. Mazikeen rolls her eyes and shifts her hips, impatient.

“Just tell them!”

During the other pause that follows, Dan abandons the glass he has been sipping from this whole time and quietly joins Chloe, Maze and Linda at the entrance, the only place where they can avoid stepping through the chaos of the attack.

“Okay, fine. There will be a very exclusive auction tonight, for rich fanatics of the occult, like the last one.”

Dan looks puzzled, only vaguely remembering a BOLO put out for angel wings back when Lucifer’s had gone missing; but Linda and Chloe know what the man is talking about. Chloe will make sure to bring him up to speed after the call. For now, this doesn’t sound good. At all. But it’s happening tonight, right after Lucifer was taken, so it has to be it. The wings on sale had been fake the first time around: was Lucifer kidnapped to be used as a reference to make new ones, after the FBI seized everything? It just seems like a lot of extra trouble when the Internet is full of pretty accurate representations of angel wings. And also...

“Wait, who is behind it?” she asks, her face closer to Maze’s phone. “Carmen is... out of business.”

In one of their long conversations, Chloe and Lucifer had gone over almost every case they solved together back when she didn’t believe him, so Lucifer could fill in the gaps for her. She now knows that Lucifer tracked down the thief and retrieved his real wings, only to burn them afterwards. And the man, well... like Jimmy Barnes, he will probably live out the rest of his days in a mental hospital. She’s not sure Dan is ready for this level of detail, though.

“His younger brother Dylan took over" Mazikeen’s informant explains over the phone. “He works so far under the radar that I'm pretty sure not even the FBI knows about it this time. He disappeared for a while, probably collecting fake crap overseas, but a source told me he’s pitching this auction by saying he has something special in store, totally legit, and priceless.”

Dread crawls its way down Chloe’s spine all the way to her feet, making her legs wobble for a moment. Linda stares at her with wide eyes, and Mazikeen has a very serious expression on her face. Are they going to sell... the real ones? How are they going to cut them off? Her head swims at the thought. She feels almost nauseous.

When Ella silently reappears at her side and squeezes her hand, probably after hearing at least the last part of what the man said, Chloe finds the courage to ask.

“What is he selling?”

She can feel everyone holding their breath. Even on the other end of the line, there is hesitation, almost fear.

“I mean, it can’t be real though, right?” the person starts to ramble nervously. “I guess they used some kind of implants? Still, I never took the guy for such a freak, you know?”

“_Thomas_” Mazikeen warns, tapping one of her heels on the floor. Chloe doesn’t know why she isn’t just saying it herself, if the two already had this conversation. Maybe Maze knows she’ll have a lot of questions to ask the informant directly and is letting Chloe lead the interrogation.

“Thomas,” Chloe echoes then, trying to soothe the guy with a gentler tone, “what is he selling?”

Thomas clears his throat, the audio of the call crackling with it.

“He... he claims to be selling an angel.”


	2. Chapter 2

Chloe’s ears are ringing. Around her, panic spreads like fever.

“What?” Linda asks, grabbing the phone from Mazikeen’s hand in a surge of boldness before the demon takes it back from her, ever gelous of her possessions.

“You’re kidding, right?” Ella yelps.

“Jesus" Dan breathes out, raking a hand through his short hair.

“_What?!_” Linda repeats.

“Quiet!” Mazikeen speaks up, her free hand in the air to lay down the law, before looking at Chloe with intent. As if Chloe had all the answers. The only thing she has is more questions, and a scream she won’t allow to come out.

_Think, think, think, think._

“Do you know where this Dylan is now?” she hears herself say.

“No, he is very careful about staying hidden until the very last moment before the event. But I think I can find out the address of the venue, if you give me a bit more time" Thomas replies. “I'll text it to Maze with the time, once I know it.”

It’s a good thing the guy is smart enough not to inquire further on why they sound so scared about something that is supposed to be impossible. Chloe doesn’t have the energy to come up with an appropriately elaborate excuse to cover up the truth at the moment. Maybe she doesn’t appear to have any energy in general, because Dan looks at her fondly and then takes over.

“After you do, can you get us in? Put us on the guest list with fake names?” he asks before thinking out loud for everyone to hear, all practical and detective-like. “Being outnumbered shouldn’t necessarily be a problem with Maze there, but we have a hostage to rescue. I say we do this the sneaky way instead of just barging in, or we might put him in more danger.”

Chloe stares back at him with gratitude, moved by his thoughtfulness toward Lucifer’s wellbeing.

“Sorry, man, I’m not close with the guy. And the buyers were all chosen very carefully beforehand. Besides, I'm out of that racket now. All I can offer is info, not access.”

“The catering” Ella blurts out, earning herself a series of quizzical looks. “People drink gallons of champagne during these things. If they hired a company, see if you can tell us which one and we’ll find a way to pose as waiters. Hopefully they’ll be under less scrutiny than the guests.”

Mazikeen eyes the forensic scientist up and down in appreciation, before her former bounty’s answer. If the man is confused by the plan they are concocting, he doesn’t show it, focusing exclusively on giving direct, useful answers. Chloe likes him already.

“It might take me even longer to find out but... sure, anything for Maze.”

“Aw, thank you, sweetcheeks” the demon cooes, flashing her white smile to the screen as if the man could see her. There is a sigh on the other end of the line.

“I asked you not to call me that.”

“Whatever” she rolls her eyes, annoyed. “Let me know. _Soon_.”

And she disconnects the call.

“Before anyone asks, yes, I'll gladly host a group therapy session for free after everything is said and done" Linda says, staring at an indefinite spot on the wall next to the elevator. Chloe sees Dan smiling at her with a gratitude that seems all too serious, his way of implying _I'll take you up on that_. To be fair, maybe they all should.

“There was nothing down there and there are no security cameras in the side alley, so I'll go to the lab while we wait" Ella informs them, squeezing Chloe’s hand again before releasing it – only now, Chloe realizes she has been holding it the entire time. “I'll see you guys at the precinct?”

She nods. Dan does too, but doesn’t join Ella to get down as Chloe expected. Once the doors close and the elevator starts going down, he says, “Chlo, this is basically a human trafficking situation – well, not _human_, but you get it. Are you sure we shouldn’t involve the LAPD, or the FBI?”

Chloe sighs. She knows they’ll go in barely prepared, and too personally involved to think clearly. She knows this is what Dan is saying, and that his worry means he has Lucifer's best interest at heart. But...

“It’s already bad enough that this sicko is letting a bunch of billionaires in on the secret, Dan. I don’t trust any authority to be able to handle it, and we don’t have Amenadiel to stop time and whisk Lucifer away before they storm the place. Who knows what would happen to Lucifer if the knowledge of his existence spread all the way to the top of the chain of command. Those wings can heal _anything_. People would kill for them if they found out.”

_Or pay a fortune to have them. And the body attached to them, apparently._

Her ex husband gapes at her, overwhelmed by the pile of information she just dropped on him, and stays silent.

“Do you think the government would perform experiments on him? You know, set up an Area 51 sort of place, but for _angels_?” Linda wonders, before quickly realizing she might be making things worse. “Sorry. Too many _X-Files_ re-runs while I was on maternity leave.”

“Let’s just say I really don’t want to find out" Chloe sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“Are you telling me it’s our job to keep humanity from discovering that divinity is real?” Dan asks in disbelief, his hands on his hips. “When all Lucifer ever does is shout to the wind that he’s the _Devil_?”

Linda beats Chloe to it and replies for her, but much more eloquently than she would have, for sure.

“That’s the point, Dan. He says it so often that people don’t believe him. But actual proof is a completely different story. I think us being aware is a gift, but I also think we have a duty to protect this knowledge from people who might not be as level-headed as us. I went through my very own angel-wings-dumpster-fire rite of passage to make sure no one came in contact with any evidence of the divine.”

Dan seems to process everything she is saying with nods of agreement while she speaks, but the last part gives him pause.

“Do I want to know more?” he asks, raising one eyebrow.

“Nope.”

“Great! Now that it’s settled,” Mazikeen scowls, then claps her hands, “I'll put my bounty hunting skills to good use and try to track down this piece of shit. You guys are welcome to do the same in your own boring, ineffective way. I'll let you know if I find him or if Thomas texts me.”

Heels clicking on the floor, she turns around and storms off, disappearing with the elevator as it goes down.

“I guess this means I'll stay here and clean up?" Linda calls after her, shrugging as she quickly accepts the task she just volunteered for. She starts heading for the kitchen, probably to find a broom, then stops and adds, “Please, keep me in the loop, Chloe. I know I'm not trained for undercover missions but if it comes to that and if you think I can be useful, count me in.”

Chloe thinks it over. Linda just had a baby, whose father is probably getting roasted over hot coals by an army of angry angels as they speak, or something. It doesn’t feel right to put her in danger, but at the same time, it doesn’t feel fair to consider her the delicate little flower that she isn’t. Hell, Linda might be the strongest woman Chloe has ever met.

“I'll let you know" she simply says, and thankfully, it seems to be enough for the time being.

Chloe and Dan step into the elevator. Chloe doesn’t know if it’s the jerking motion of it as it starts going down, but nausea grips her stomach and throat again, so she braces herself against the wall behind her and closes her eyes to will it away.

“Chloe" Dan whispers, tentative. She realizes it’s been a long time since they’ve been alone together, without Trixie or Lucifer or other cops around. She doesn’t really know what to make of it.

“I'm fine" she says, but it doesn’t come out right, and she knows it. Her voice sounds weak and whiny to her own ears. Her eyes burn under her closed eyelids, but she can’t allow herself to cry. God, she has cried so, so many tears already.

“Come here" she hears, and then two strong arms are around her, pulling her close. She presses her face in the crook of Dan's neck and lets him place a hand behind her head and another on her back, lets him hold her for a moment. She grips his grey shirt between them, probably rumpling it, and shakes with quiet rage.

“He deserves so much more than this" she whispers, furious at Carmen and Dylan and _humans_, at the greed of this impossible world they live in. “I know you have your issues with him, but-"

“Hey, are you kidding?” Dan interrupts her, pulling back slightly to look at her. “I mean, he’s still too rich and too smug and too British for my taste, but... despite what- despite _who_ he is... he’s good to you, Chlo, and to Trixie. I would _never_ wish this to him. I have your back on this, one hundred percent.”

“Thank you" she smiles, feeling the threat of tears subside. “Come on, let’s go look for this ghost of a man. I'm always up for a challenge.”

*

The collar doesn’t allow Lucifer to find a single position that is comfortable, beside standing up. He needs food and water, but they wouldn’t give him either of those things, thinking he might try to pull some stunt to escape once they open his small glass prison even for a moment. They’re not wrong. He needs sleep, but whenever he sits down and starts dozing off, his head lolls to the side and takes his body down with it until the chain ends up holding his whole weight and he jumps awake at the pull of it around his neck, gasping. And he’s slightly cold, left only in his trousers without even his socks on.

He feels so human it’s actually mortifying. He doesn’t think he’s ever minded the experience until now. Not even pain, if controlled, and outside of work the pain is _always_ controlled. Now he feels _too_ human, if that’s possible, and too much all at once. Ironic, considering that his wings are out, the very thing (beside his Devil face) that shows what he really is. He tried to refuse but at some point he just couldn’t take the shocks anymore. _Ugh. Bloody, inexplicable mortality._

And still, no one has tried to cut them off as he expected. He still doesn’t have a clue about what the black man actually wants to gain from this plan. The kidnapper has left the room for a while now, handing the remote to a bulky guy who hasn’t said a word, but hasn’t missed a beat in activating the tasing device around Lucifer’s neck just in time to stop him from pushing his weight against the glass or pulling at the collar or the chain to try and break them in half. It’s unnerving on top of being painful and the terrifying truth is that there is no point as long as someone watches him this closely.

Lucifer doesn’t know what time it is but he’s pretty sure the Detective is looking for him by now. He can picture her so clearly as she puts together clues and ponders over evidence, maybe with the whole gang at her side to help her. He can picture the creases of worry and fear on her forehead, and it’s painful as well, but deeper inside his chest where his love for her resides. But she’s his only hope, until he can think of anything else, because he knows Amenadiel left for the Silver City on the kind of business that doesn’t allow for earthly distractions, not even those related to his most handsome, devilish brother. Their siblings and their terrible timing, as usual.

When the sudden noise of knuckles knocking against the glass startles him awake, he realizes he actually managed to sleep for a bit, his wings folded around himself like a cocoon. They hit the glass on either side as they unfurl nervously, feathers jutting up at all angles in alert. He can’t even open them completely in the limited space he has, and they feel cramped, like a limb you have kept tucked under your weight for too long.

“Rise and shine!" the man intones in amusement, with his smug grin Lucifer can’t wait to turn into a mask of pleading, shivering terror in front of his Devil face (he has tried that, too, but it’s the move they like the least, and the taser is always put on the highest setting to stop him from changing his features).

Lucifer rises to stand – he can’t bear to kneel in front of him, in front of _anyone_; can’t ever allow for someone to look down at him like Michael with his sword under his chin. He might have left Hell once again but he is a _king_; demons cower and whimper and bow before him, looking _up_ at the throne of their Lord. A mere mortal, a sinner to punish, no less, has no right thinking or even assuming he can strip him of what he is.

And if they want to cut them, so be it, they can go ahead. It’s nothing new, nothing he hasn’t gone through before. He’ll let them think they can have them for a moment, just to make the punishment more intense afterwards, just to increase their surprise and shock when he'll grow a new pair and burn the old one in front of their eyes before the flames burst out from his own.

“You know I’ll have to go to the loo at some point, right?” he asks playfully, the palms of his hands on either side of the box. “How long do you plan on keeping me in this fish tank?”

_Do you not have the balls to do it?_, he thinks to himself. _What’s taking you so long?_

“Not much longer” the man replies, one of his own palms pressed on the glass in front of him. “And the bathroom thing, well, that is a problem for the highest bidder to solve.”

Lucifer freezes. _Higher bidder. In an auction. Motherf-_

“So that's why you looked so familiar!” he claps, feeling an exhilaration from the discovery that probably stems from pure exhaustion. “You are related to one mister Carmen, that miserable lowlife! Worshiper of the almighty dollar! How is he, by the way? Did he ever recover?”

He must admit, it is extremely satisfying to see the man flinch for the first time, his grin faltering even if only for a second. A façade of coldness slips in its place, all the fake enthusiasm from before forgotten – not that Lucifer minds, because he'd rather deal with bluntness.

“Yes, he’s my brother, and no, he did not.”

Lucifer licks his dry lips, feeling a surge of dark, deep-rooted cruelty toward both of them. He chuckles, his voice turning smooth and mischievous when he speaks again.

“Mmm, good. I promise I'll find the two of you a double hospital room to share, once I'm done with you.”

Carmen's brother laughs. He laughs way too much for Lucifer’s liking, considering his wasn’t sarcasm. At all.

“You really think that’s how this will go, don’t you? In a few hours, you might get shipped halfway across the world, my dear little angel.”

Lucifer’s eyes widen. Somehow, discovering the man’s identity temporarily sidetracked him. But now, he actually stops to connect the dots, retracing what his captor said. His wings puff up so suddenly that he thinks, _hopes_, they might shatter the glass around him. His composure falls apart, too, but he’s way past caring.

“How _dare_ you?” he roars, the fire of Hell in his eyes making him bolder before it dies. “Do you even know who I am? Do you know who made me? Made _these_?”

He’s never felt any kind of inherent pride in being His son, unlike Amenadiel (not after the Fall, at least). But somehow, he does now. Because the cockroach standing before him should know _better_. Better than to think he can sell him off like a property. Better than to think he can dispose of him and his wings like he has any _right_. If Lucifer can’t put the fear of Hell in him, he'll settle for the fear of God.

“Didn’t He make everything?” the man shrugs, gesturing around for emphasis. “What is the difference?”

“The _difference_”, Lucifer growls, his fist stopping an inch from the glass to spare himself the inevitable pain, “is that these were not made to satisfy your _greed_.”

“Oh?” the man inquires, stepping closer so that they are staring directly into each other’s eyes. “And what were they made for? Be stared at in wonder, like my stupid brother was doing when you found him?”

Just remembering his previous wings mounted in a glass case like a decorative stag head makes Lucifer’s blood boil, but it’s nothing compared to the rage he feels toward a brother that is clearly worse: a true worshiper of money, blasphemous more than atheist, who feels entitled to anything he can put his greedy little hands on. Greed, one of the seven deadly sins. Hell has special sections for those.

“They were made for _me_!” he objects, wings straining to break free, a flicker of flame along his cheekbone. “They belong to _me_!”

The man's index finger thumps repeatedly against the glass, pointing at him and giving a final, sentencing rhythm to the words that follow.

“And you. Belong. To _me_.”

Fire engulfs his face and erupts from his eyes, startling the guy for a precious moment that is way too short, telling him Lucifer belongs to no one but himself, Lucifer is his own man, Lucifer-

_Zap._

He ignores it, lifts his fist higher to gain momentum and punch the glass.

_Zap. Zap. Zap. Zap._

He stumbles back and falls down, holding himself up by the chain not to get choked with the motion.

_Zap. Zap. Zap. Zap. Zap. Zap._

He pants through it as it keeps going, keeps buzzing. He doesn’t care: he is fueled by a rage he hasn’t felt in a long time (the rage he reserved to Dromos when he held him up by the throat and then threw him from the throne, watching his limbs scatter on ash-covered stone like dice rolling on a table of a casino in Vegas; such a stupid comparison out of all the ones he could have come up with, and yet so ridiculously fitting).

He can hear the man shout something to the one who holds the remote, but his eyes are shut tight and the buzzing from his neck reverberates to his ears. Shocks keep coming but he refuses to faint, and with the last shred of energy he thinks he can muster, he kicks forward wildly with one leg while simultaneously flapping his wings to move the air in his favor.

The glass shatters under the pressure of his right foot, searing pain cutting the sole in lines and pinpoints of sensation. This time he falls down, but the chain stops his body from actually sliding out of the now open box. All he needs to do is stay focused for a bit longer, just enough to reach up and break it, and he’s almost there, shaking from exhaustion and electricity but there, and then-

“It’s not working! Sedate him, _now_!”

A lot of hands grab him and pin him down, then a needle punctures the skin of the inside of his elbow. He can feel his own feathers against his face as the wings try to close around him, rebelling to the unwelcomed touches, angry at the way his consciousness is starting to slip away, and with it, control.

“Patch up his foot and put his shoes back on him before you move him to another box and get ready for transfer. He'll be worth less if they see the scratches" the same voice instructs, cold and business-like, because this _is_ business.

_It doesn’t matter_, Lucifer thinks before the drug pulls him under. _The Detective is on the case._

*

For all Chloe knows, this Dylan might actually be a ghost. No registered address, no car, not a penny to his name. She doesn’t remember anyone resembling Carmen at the auction back then, so she doesn’t even know if he was present or if he only learned about what happened afterwards and maybe decided to get revenge for his brother’s induced madness, or just profit from the situation. If he has known about Lucifer’s wings all this time, the guy surely has a lot of patience, because he waited for Lucifer to go through his self-inflicted wingectomy phase (a term cleverly coined by Linda, apparently), his bat-wing phase and his temporary return to Hell.

And patience isn’t good, in criminals. It’s when they’re rash that they make mistakes.

That investigation was led by the FBI and she can’t ask them to give her names of witnesses or convicts to discreetly interrogate without making them suspicious. Flashing her badge even though this whole mission is off the record, she obtained security footage from other establishments around Lux before coming to the precinct, but Dylan must have known how to use blind spots to his advantage and she can’t identify any car turning around from the side exit of the building and pulling into the main boulevard.

She even calls the hospital where Carmen now resides permanently and asks a few questions to the nurses to find out if the patient’s brother ever came to visit. They tell her he did, in the beginning, but once he realized there wasn’t going to be any major improvement, he stopped. Nice guy, fancy clothes. Polite but aloof. Black like Carmen, but younger and slimmer.

When Chloe suggests trying to track down every single religious relic, esoteric artifact or occult-themed item that was smuggled into L.A. in the last couple of months, Dan gently reminds her that this level of effort requires the actual involvement of the station for searches and warrants, not to mention Customs, Border and Port Police.

In conclusion, the only thread they are all hanging by is a man they don’t even know, an informant for _Mazikeen_, of all people. Chloe desperately wanted to spare Lucifer the humiliation of the auction itself by finding him beforehand, but today, she feels like she sucks at being a detective. They are only dealing with a human, as it turns out, which theoretically wasn’t the worst of the possibilities she had entertained. And yet, she feels just as powerless.

Because this is a human who has planned this for a long time. A human who is managing to keep Lucifer locked somewhere, somehow, despite how far she is from him. A human who might have been watching them both to figure out all of Lucifer’s secrets and weaknesses.

_“Babe, I see you decided to take matters into your own hands and clean my hairbrush" she giggles after eyeing the item on the side of the sink. “Sorry about that, I guess I’m just lazy sometimes.”_

_“What?” Lucifer asks as he steps out of her shower, the drops of water on his chest and stomach making him look nothing short of delicious. “You’re telling me the wild animal you were growing on it is finally gone?”_

_He wraps his arms around her from behind, pressing his body into hers and placing his chin on her shoulder to look down, making it impossible for Chloe to concentrate on anything else let alone brush her teeth for the night._

_“Yes, because you complained about it so much that in the end, you killed it” she accuses playfully, staring at him in the mirror. Lucifer kisses her cheek, amused._

_“No, I didn’t.”_

_She gasps in mock indignation, “Lucifer! The Devil never lies!”_

_“I'm not lying, dear. Might have been Trixie or Maze, or maybe you sleep-clean. What does it matter? Come here, let me kiss you now.”_

The memory fades away, and Chloe blinks.

Paranoia is _definitely_ getting the best of her. She decides that as a distraction, lunch will have to do.

There isn’t a lot of luck going around, to say the least, but the good news is that all she has to do now is paperwork because the citizens of L.A. had the decency not to kill each other for one day. Sitting at her desk after her sandwich and coffee, Chloe realizes Lucifer would have _hated_ this part, and in an instant he’s almost there with her: turning around and around and around in the chair across from her while loudly eating an unhealthy amount of cheese puffs from their oily package.

_Detective, surely there’s a rookie who can do this for you while you show me how wonderful the storage room is_, he would say (has said, many times) before dragging her away and kissing her senseless against the closed door, fingers sneaking down to tease her and drive her mad until she would flip their positions and have _her_ fun with him, his infuriatingly kissable smirk slipping from his face once she’d drop to her knees.

_You are so beautiful_, he would say (has said, many times) right after, as if in the thousands of years he has already lived he had never seen anything better.

Chloe clutches at the bullet hanging from her neck and decides she’s done being useless and filling papers for today. Even this simple task is proving impossible with how unfocused she is, now that she knows that all she has to do is wait for Maze's update. So she leaves her desk and goes to seek comfort inside Ella’s lab, a space so small and yet so isolated that sometimes stepping in it feels like entering another world, a bubble of safety and warm hugs and questionable music and science, data, facts.

When Ella sees her walking in, she gestures for Chloe not to close the door just yet.

“Get Dan in here too, I have the lab results.”

Once the three of them are inside, Ella closes the shutters of the cubicle and turns to them.

“Okay, so, the only blood that isn’t, uhm, human was the one near the piano. A blow to the head, I think. The one on the glass pieces belongs to three different people, all with criminal records. Armed robbery, beatings on commission for the mob, this kind of stuff. My guess is, Lucifer managed to slam them into the table, then tried to get away, but maybe someone else knocked him out."

“Maybe we should try and track them down, go have a chat with one or all of them. Maze’s guy is taking too long" Dan says, fists clenched on the table. And speak of the, well, demon...

“Guys, it’s her" Chloe announces once she takes her vibrating phone out of her pocket, almost grateful for the distraction from the vivid picture Ella just painted. With a shaking breath, she puts the phone on the table, answers the call and sets it on speaker.

“Maze, talk to me.”

Mazikeen sighs, which is never a good sign.

“Yeah, so the thing is, I couldn’t get my hands on the motherfucker and Thomas is having a hard time finding out the actual location of the auction. Promising and delivering favors, you know the deal. Lucifer won’t like it but he even had to make deals in his name, just to speak to someone who might know someone who has the info. He said he might be able to tell us by tonight, hopefully.”

“Hope is not enough, Maze. The auction _is_ tonight" Chloe says, her heart sinking as she looks at the equally anguished faces around her. If they mess this up, someone might actually end up _buying Lucifer_, for crying out loud. The thought itself is absurd, and so real that it’s terrifying.

“We need to speed this up" Ella urges in agreement. “We need to get there before anyone else. But if Maze’s guy can’t find out the place I doubt he’ll know if they hired a catering company in time for us to approach it.”

With what, they still didn’t discuss. A bribe? The pretense of an actual sting operation having to take place? Chloe doesn’t even want to think about how many laws they’ll end up breaking. There is still a part of her that wishes they could do this officially, backed by the power of the whole police department, but they can't. What gives her strength is the fact that her colleagues don’t seem to have any issue waltzing around the rules of the system they’re supposed to strictly follow. It wouldn’t be the first time, after all. To save her from the poisoning, she knows Ella and Dan went above and beyond.

“Okay, let’s say we’ll know at the last moment. Who cares!” Maze exclaims, her voice overly hopeful and enthusiastic. “I say we storm the building, you let me do my thing, and there won’t be a man left standing.”

Which might sound extremely effective in theory, but Chloe knows Dan wasn’t wrong when he advised caution. They are dealing with a patient man, a planner. Improvising could be their downfall.

“Lucifer included, possibly" she counters, placing her elbows on the table and raking her hands through her hair nervously. “I know what you’re capable of, Maze, but I don’t like the idea of us going in blind. While we fight our way through I don’t know how many security guards, Dylan might have the time to get away with Lucifer and we may never find him again. I want to get there beforehand, inspect the place, pinpoint possible entrances and exits, be able to move around freely without having to constantly watch our backs. Being there to set up might even allow us to get to Lucifer before anyone else sees him, before the bidding starts. Which, and I can’t stress this enough, would be the best way to go about this.”

After a long moment of silence, Dan's face lights up.

“Let’s circle back to the attackers” he says. “One of them might have the information we need.”

Chloe bites her lower lip, uncertain. It’s risky, maybe too risky.

“But if they warn Dylan that we’re onto him, we're doomed, Dan” she tells him, eyes pleading for a solution, a break. She feels like all they’ve been doing is talk. Maybe it really is time to take matters into their own hands, and in the literal sense.

Dan seems to think the same, his stare suddenly serious.

“Trust me, Chlo. I'll make sure they don’t.”

And Chloe believes him, because she knows darkness, now: she loves someone who's shaped his whole life in and around it, someone who rules over it, as one of his many names say. There is some of it in Dan, too, gone unnoticed by naive, married Chloe, but not anymore by the woman she is now; a woman who knows there are grey areas between the light and the dark and creatures who dwell in that gap through the centuries: demons who should be bad but are not, angels who should be holy but have fallen.

“Oh, you don’t have to worry, Decker” Maze pipes up, and Chloe can almost picture her tongue grazing her sharp teeth in anticipation. “If the plan is to rough somebody up, I'll go with him. So, where to?”

Chloe and Dan look at Ella for guidance. She gulps, then frantically starts moving papers around.

“The- the one who lost more blood! We have the address and if you find him, you can tell him not to show so we won’t risk him acting suspicious and alerting others at the auction. He can say he’s recovering from the wound, they’ll buy it without asking questions.”

She hands a specific paper to Dan, and he takes it, nodding.

“We’re on it. Maze, I'll text you the address. Meet me there.”

“You got it, Espinoza. Like the good old days.”

Chloe doesn’t fully know what she means, but she doesn’t particularly care at the moment. Even if she did, Dan doesn’t give her the time to ask, because he just mutters something that sounds like a curse under his breath and leaves. He didn’t even ask her to go with him, but Chloe finds a strange comfort in his resolve to deal with this as he sees fit, his willingness to do his part. If he deems Maze to be the best companion for this, the one best suited to handle this side of him, Chloe can’t object. She trusts him enough to know he won’t cross the line. Can she say the same about Maze? Well, it’s a good thing the demon isn’t alone, then.

“It’s on, my demon squad" Mazikeen’s voice announces, startling her – Chloe kind of assumed she hung up after Dan left.

“Yeah, you’re not calling us that" she clarifies, rolling her eyes. In her mind, Maze is doing the same.

“Hell-bitches? Dark Ladies? Devil’s Tribe?”

Ella chuckles and shakes her head, then looks at the screen with fondness.

“Let’s just save him, Maze" she chastises softly. “Let’s save our Lucifer.”

Mazikeen’s smile can be heard even over the phone.

“You can bet your nerdy ass we will, Lopez.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And in the next chapter, the auction starts!


	3. Chapter 3

Dan and Mazikeen come back to the precinct with an address and the name of a catering company. Chloe and Ella know better than to ask how they got them.

“Only Dylan and a few of his most trusted men know his and Lucifer’s current location, though" Maze informs grimly. “There’s no avoiding this asshole's auction, it seems.”

When Linda calls Chloe to check in on the most recent developments, Chloe informs her that she won’t allow her to come along. At the end of the day, Linda is a civilian, and even though this mission is rogue and completely unauthorized, Chloe is still a cop and can’t knowingly put her in harm’s way.

To be honest, she has her reservations about Ella, too, but there was no dissuading _her_; plus, Ella informed her that she knows how to use a firearm if it will come to that, and that she has already done it in Vegas (_Ask Lucifer later, he'll tell you all about it_, she said, with a certainty and conviction in the fact that he'll be with them again that warmed Chloe’s heart).

To her surprise, Linda doesn’t object; on the contrary, she trusts Chloe’s judgement without much protesting. And in the end, the therapist surprises her once again with an idea, and an offer.

“In my opinion, bribing the company certainly is the way to go, Chloe. I mean, they must have been bribed already into not reporting the auction to the police, I guess. Hopefully, they’ll just see it as a bonus. Mazikeen has access to Lucifer’s safe, I think, and anyway we all know the code is either 6-6-6 or your birthday. You should tell him to change it, by the way. But I'm digressing.”

Chloe smiles over the phone, still huddled up in Ella’s cubicle while the rest of the dream team goes over details. Linda just talked about Lucifer in the future tense, too. Because they’ll save him, and that’s a fact.

“The point is" Linda goes on, “that you need a reason for wanting to be there, don’t you think? So, I asked Reese’s boss for a favor – they all love me there. You guys can say you write for the paper and that you are investigating for a piece about the black market; he'll confirm if anyone calls to check. Reassure the company that they won’t be mentioned in the article, and you’ll see how they’ll jump at the chance to make double the money without any risk of retaliation.”

And so it is that Chloe, after leaving Trixie at Linda’s house for the evening, finds herself in a small theater currently closed for renovation with Ella, Dan and Maze. For a moment, she almost decided not to go at all, sparing Lucifer the inconvenience that is the mortality she causes in him. But even if they kidnapped him when she was still close by, she can’t think of any type of restraint he wouldn’t be able to break afterwards, any kind of substance he wouldn’t burn through with his celestial metabolism. She is missing something, or maybe deep down she guessed it right but refuses to admit it.

And the truth is, she might have accepted stepping aside to let him deal with demons, but she’ll fight tooth and nail to save him from her own kind. Somehow, it feels like a responsibility.

They are sent in at 11 PM to set up, one hour before the auction, it seems. The lobby is full of construction equipment and half-covered in plastic, and the stage hall is old and in dire need of at least a decent paint job and new upholstery. The waiters and servers are few, mostly immigrants, and go about their business with their eyes down, intent on not seeing anything they’ll eventually feel guilty about not reporting.

The guests will occupy the first rows of seats, so tables with champagne and a variety of delicacies (caviar, oysters and other fancy stuff Chloe will never truly get the point of) are positioned along the side corridors, leaving just the right amount of space to walk through. The idea of a bunch of billionaires gracing such a run-down place with their presence is actually a bit ridiculous, and speaks volumes about the trust they are putting in the promise Dylan made them.

Chloe, Ella, Dan and Maze all have an earpiece and a bug under their plain white shirts: Dylan’s men conducted a security check at the entrance, but the head of staff agreed to hide the devices for them in a bag among the food supplies so they could retrieve them later, convinced by the notion that “they are necessary for them to write the piece in the most truthful way possible". Honestly, Chloe isn’t even sure the man cares, because they paid him and everyone else a ridiculous amount of money and, well, today more than ever money seems what makes the world go round.

There was no way to justify weapons, though, so they are unarmed: certainly not a problem for Maze, but the rest of them will have to do without or try and snatch one from a guard.  
  
One by one so as not to raise suspicions, they excuse themselves and explore as much of the theater as they can. Armed guards patrol the hallways, the main entrance and the ones on the sides of the building: a small door used to throw out the trash, and a big garage door that connects the other alley with a storage room, probably used to get costumes, set design pieces and lighting equipment delivered there before usage. The perfect way to move a man from a car or a truck directly inside, and probably the reason this theater was chosen in the first place.

At the right time, when Lucifer will finally be at a reachable distance, Mazikeen and Dan will take care of the guards to allow their escape from the smaller one.

It’s Ella, with her innocent face and bouncing ponytail, who pretends to wander beyond the stage curtain by mistake, claiming to be looking for a broom to clean the floor one last time before the guests arrive. If Lucifer is back there, they can finally set the plan in motion, get out of this hellhole and get back to their absolutely not normal lives. Not that Chloe would want for hers to be any other way – well, demon shenanigans and evil auctioneers aside.

“Uh, _lo siento_, my bad!” they hear Ella tell the guard backstage, who bellows at her to get out and stick to her job, plus a chain of racist slurs they all grimace at.

“Lucifer is not in there, guys" Ella whispers under her breath as she makes her way down the stage, the four of them all scattered in different corners. “Just glass cases with old crosses and books – totally fake according to me, by the way. At this point, I think they’ll get him here right before announcing him to the audience.”

“Great. Just great" Chloe mutters as she fills a bucket with ice from a bigger container. “It’s not how I wanted this to go, but screw it. Once we have him in our sights, Maze and Dan will slip out to take down the guards. Ella and I will have to find a weapon somehow, or one of you guys can rush back in and give it to us, then we’ll run to the stage. Let’s hope Dylan is unarmed, and that the guests and staff will be smart enough not to stand in the way.”

“Maybe we should leave now" Dan suggests in a low voice as he takes care of another table. “Get back to the car, make it a stake-out and try to intercept them before they even enter the building with him.”

“I don’t know, Dan, we made it this far. I don’t think we should risk drawing attention to ourselves” Ella points out. “They don’t even need to stop, they can get a vehicle all the way in for delivery. What if they see us and turn back? Then all this will have been for nothing.”

Chloe can sense they are at a crossroads, but fate decides there is no time for doubts. People slowly start streaming in and the staff gets instructed to get their coats and put them on the hangers in the far corner of the hall. At this point, the guards are on high alert, the first items are being moved to the stage, and wandering off stops being an option.

The carefully selected buyers are, as such, not many. An Arab man in traditional clothes with an interpreter and his own bodyguard; a businessman with an Italian accent wearing Armani (the suit reminds Chloe of Lucifer, and she hates the man for it); a woman who sounds Russian and struts to her seat in a sleek black dress and red heels. They shouldn’t be more than a dozen, and Chloe tries to file away all of their faces in her mind.

When Dylan appears, Chloe and Ella are on one side of the rows of seats and Dan and Maze on the other, trays in hand to collect empty glasses and refill them cyclically. The lights get dimmer all around the room, leaving only the stage perfectly illuminated. In the semi-darkness, they all exchange angry glances as the man opens his mouth to speak for the first time, welcoming the potential buyers with a big smile.

_“Lucifer, your brother got all the charm in the family" she said in another auction, playful and teasing, back when angel wings were a game or a metaphor or just as good an excuse as any for Lucifer to make things about himself, she thought. Back when life was simpler and the spark between them sizzled with the excitement of the unknown._

_“Right, enough of that, it’s unsettling to see you two get along" Lucifer replied, and she hoped it was out of jealousy, just a tiny bit._

_Later that night the Devil burned his wings on the beach where he first landed as Chloe lay awake a bit longer than usual in her bed, nibbling at her nails as she thought of the scars on his back._

This time he’s not at her side, beautiful in his black suit and bowtie, and the place lacks the elegance of that first venue, painting the whole affair a darker shade of _wrong_. As the auction starts, Dylan certainly makes up for it with his enthusiasm, if one can call it such, but his guests seem almost bored even as they bid higher and higher for things Chloe wouldn’t even know where to keep or how to maintain.

She grows impatient as time ticks by, and so do they, their wait fed and made longer by the auctioneer’s inventive introductions and descriptions. He gets off on how badly they want to get to the main course, Chloe knows. He’s a fisherman who threw his bait and the fish are all out of the water gaping at him, basically begging to be hooked and dragged out. When the time comes, the light overhead seems to cast longer, heavier shadows on his smug face and impeccable blue suit.

“Thank you all for being so patient" he says, one melodramatic palm over his chest. “As you know, I made you a promise, and I always deliver. Some of you might remember my brother Carmen's last auction, and the angel wings he tried to sell. Well, it shames me to inform you those were not the real deal. But this, my friends... oh, _this_ most certainly is.”

The buyers are so hypnotized that they stopped asking for food and champagne, leaving the four of them standing along the side corridors, out of the way so the audience can thoroughly enjoy the show. The anticipation is so thick in the air that you could cut it with a knife. Chloe’s nails dig into her own palms, her teeth grinding together. Only when Ella slips a hand down to squeeze hers, she feels one of her fists relaxing to welcome it.

_Please, let him be okay_, she prays, not sure his Father will hear, or care.

A tall, seemingly cube-shaped structure gets wheeled on the stage from the side, a thick red cloth covering it, as if hiding a magician’s trick. A cage, Chloe assumes, feeling her throat getting tighter.

“Ask yourselves how much would you be willing to pay for your very own piece of divinity" Dylan says in a louder, more passionate voice, before gripping one end of the cloth and yanking it away, causing a collective gasp. “I say bidding starts at one million, for the luxury of owning an angel made by the Lord Himself!”

Under the cloth, there is a glass case, and inside the glass case, Lucifer. He squints against the light and shadows his eyes with one hand before slowly getting used to it, looking around with an expression of mounting disgust, his underlying panic betrayed by the way his huge white wings vibrate behind him, the sound loud against the glass. What Chloe can barely stand to look at, though, is the leather collar around his neck and the chain that binds him in place – _him_, the angel who fell for free will, the defender of the freedom of pursuing desires of all kind.

“Fucking bastards" Mazikeen growls under her breath, a low rumbling sound in everyone’s ear.

Lucifer looks so pale that the light from the wings almost bounces back from his skin, and he looks exhausted, with dark circles under his eyes and a slightly unfocused gaze – recovering from something they might have injected him with, Chloe assumes, and that’s it, she’s done.

“Dan, Maze, go and clear an exit path for us. We’ll stand at the ready" she whispers. Lucifer is sort of standing on his own two feet, but slumped against one side of the case; he barely seems fit to walk, let alone fight, and if they'll have to carry him their escape will be even slower. They can’t cause a scene before Maze and Dan get rid of their obstacles as silently as possible.

Almost immediately, she sees the two retreating to quietly disappear beyond a door, helped by the cover of darkness and the fact that everyone’s attention is directed at the stage. There are only two guards inside the hall now, while the rest has been sent to keep watch outside of it: two bulky, wide-shouldered men Chloe and Ella will have to neutralize if they want to have a shot against the ones on stage.

“Now, I know what you might be thinking" Dylan continues, circling around Lucifer like a vulture, his hands joined together. “’What if he’s trying to trick us, like his brother?’ Of course, this pains me, my friends, but I understand. So please, come forward. Inspect the goods and see for yourselves that Dylan is no liar.”

The guests all stir from their seats, intrigued. The waiters flinch nervously along the sides of the room, incredulous and scared. Chloe and Ella exchange a glance of pure dread.

After a small gesture from the auctioneer, two men appear from backstage. One keeps to the side, holding something in his hand that Chloe can’t see. The other walks to the case, opens the lock in the front and reaches up to unclasp the chain that binds Lucifer’s neck to the top of it. Lucifer’s arms shoot forward to try and take advantage of the opening, but then he suddenly shudders, his hands moving to the sides to brace himself and not fall down.

“There's something wrong with him" Ella says, echoing Chloe’s thoughts. Squeezing each other’s hand, they watch with uneasiness as the man drags Lucifer out of the case by the chain, then circles behind him and his wings and kicks him hard in the back of one leg, pushing him on his knees. Chloe jumps at the sound of them hitting the wooden floor, then gapes in horror when Lucifer, positively furious, tries to stand up and only gets halfway before an unnatural shiver courses through his whole body and forces him back down.

This time, she doesn’t miss the flicker of movement from the side of the stage, and when she looks back at Lucifer, she connects the dots.

“The collar is a tasing device” she tells Ella. The other woman stays silent for a moment, and in the meantime, the man behind Lucifer takes advantage of his weakness as he recovers from the aftershocks: after being handed another chain by Dylan, he binds Lucifer’s wings together, slinging the chain around the top so they can’t unfurl fully or be tucked back inside his body (presumably). On any given day, when Lucifer is in his usual shape, Chloe knows they would be able to knock people to the ground just by pushing air forward as they flap, and even with how exhausted and probably drugged he is, the precaution seems horrifyingly smart.

Then, the man seems to be slipping the chain downward to bind his wrists behind his back, before making one last knot around the wings. The metal criss-crosses all along the length of Lucifer’s body and the weight of it would be enough to make anyone collapse backwards.

“Do you see that in the front, though?” Ella whispers, her brow furrowed in concentration. “It’s like there’s something attached to the collar, under his chin.”

Chloe looks back at the stage, but she can’t make it out with Lucifer’s head hanging low. Then the man behind him yanks at the chain and grips him by the hair so that the buyers, now slowly leaving their seats, can _inspect_ the face of the celestial creature they intend to keep as a pet. And Ella is right, there is something there: a hollow space in the leather that reflects the light from above.

“No way" she hears Ella gasp under her breath, and when she turns to her, she finds her looking at the stage through a small pair of black binoculars. She blinks.

“Where- where did you get those?!”

“Russian lady had them in the pocket of her fancy coat. Maybe she didn’t think she’d be allowed to get such a close look" Ella shrugs, and oh, right, she used to steal cars, Chloe reminds herself. Pickpocketing shouldn’t be that big of a problem for her.

“So, what is it?” she asks, impatient. On the stage, Lucifer is struggling, his jaw clenched impossibly tight, wings convulsing; and when another shock comes, Chloe’s body calls to her with the need to jump a sentinel, get a gun and just cause absolute havoc. But in her ear, she has been hearing panting and grunting this whole time, from Maze and Dan and the guards they are taking care of. So far, it hasn’t stopped.

Ella lowers the binoculars and stares at her with an expression she can’t quite place.

“Chloe, I think it’s a lock of your hair. Encased in it.”

Chloe grabs the binoculars from her hand, maybe with too much force, and sees for herself.

Indeed, no way. No way even a _piece_ of her DNA can make Lucifer mortal. No way. No _damn_ way. And instead... way.

All that was needed for this to happen was a hairbrush she left on the sink while at work. She doesn’t even have to be in the same _city_ as Lucifer for him to be in danger. How long has Dylan been watching them to figure out that she is his Achilles' heel? Why hasn’t she thought about this possibility before? And Lucifer hasn’t, either, because Chloe being a miracle is a first in the history of the world. Right, that.

And most likely, he isn’t aware of what is making him vulnerable (what _has_ been making him vulnerable, even in Chloe’s absence), because the collar is too tight around his neck for him to see what’s under his own chin. But this guilt, this rock she can almost feel tied to her neck and trying to drag her into the abyss, will have to be unpacked later. She owes Lucifer this much.

“Gorgeous, isn’t it?” Dylan asks the first bold guests who reach him on the stage, slowly approaching a trembling Lucifer in complete wonder, and Chloe doesn’t miss the use of the pronoun – isn’t _it_ –, her blood boiling in her veins. “Go on, don’t be shy! Touch the feathers, feel their softness, their divine glow! Imagine being able to look at them for the rest of your _lives_.”

Lucifer told her, once, that his wings seem to awake something in humans, pulling at their desire to _believe_ even when they don’t. Not all people are affected by them, though; some people have no use for the divine, they don’t want it, they don’t get it. Chloe, Ella and Dan have felt what he said, but after seeing them the first time (well, for her, many times) they have learnt how to see past them, how to see _him_. Dylan clearly has no need for faith. His buyers, instead, are misguidedly starved for it.

The Russian woman in the black dress reaches forward to touch the feathers, her eyes shining with awe and underneath, lust. Chloe and Ella don’t need binoculars, this time, to see Lucifer’s eyes turn more red than they’ve ever been as he snaps his head to the side to glare at her, scaring her off as she stumbles backwards on her heels.

“Don’t you _dare_” he growls, the first thing he’s said so far, Chloe realizes. His voice is hoarse and tired and furious, and when he gets electrocuted for it, he pushes through it and turns to glare at the man with the remote on the other side, even as the one behind him pulls him back by the chain.

“_Guys_” Chloe urges, unable to watch this any longer. “Please, you need to hurry.”

“Do you... want to... switch... places... Decker?” Maze’s voice pants in her ear, muffled by sounds of kicks and punches and God knows what other moves.

“Maybe you should" Ella replies for her. “He wouldn’t want you to see him like this.”

“_No one_ should see him like this" she replies, forcing back tears. Now that she knows her absence won’t make his suffering any less, there’s no way she’s leaving him.

A few of the guests get back to their seats after the display of anger, uncertain about their possible purchase, and snap their fingers at the waiters for another round of champagne. Ella and Chloe split up to serve them, keeping an eye on the stage as they walk while simultaneously listening in to Maze and Dan's dirty work somewhere in the building.

Chloe is now very aware that she can’t let Dylan and the men on stage see her until the last moment (how many of them are aware of who she is? Certainly not the patrolling guards, finally some luck), because he might recognize her to be the woman whose hair helped him bind the Devil to his will (a ridiculous notion if spelled out so simply, and yet, their new truth now). So she goes about her business with her head down, thankfully helped by the darkness and by how the auctioneer couldn’t care less about the faces of the waiters working for him.

She actually wishes Lucifer would get a glimpse of them though, to reassure him of the fact that it will be over soon, but his red eyes are on Dylan, who for some reason didn’t expect him to rebel and his buyers to have reservations about possibly having to take care of such a, well, _difficult_ specimen. Then, the auctioneer takes a steadying breath and keeps pitching his product, smiling reassuringly.

“Don’t be scared, ladies and gentlemen, that’s perfectly normal, in fact! For this is not _any_ angel but _the_ fallen angel! Lucifer, the rebellious son, the outcast! You can be sure God won’t waste His wrath to get it back from you, if you manage to tame it!”

Lucifer’s face scrunches up at the statement – it’s too low of a blow, and it hits too close to home, Chloe knows. It’s incredibly mean, to say it so matter-of-factly, as if Lucifer didn’t have any feelings to hurt in the first place. Because according to these people, he doesn’t. If they knew better, if they knew _him_, they’d also know he feels more deeply than most humans – certainly more than _them_.

“Fuck this" Chloe decides, walking back to the table with her now empty tray. She puts it down and looks around to intercept one of the guards, but Ella appears at her side and grips her upper arm.

“Don’t do it, Chloe. Don’t lose your head. Please, for him.”

“Guys, if you get him out from the right side of the stage, the path is clear all the way to the exit” Dan's voice pants in their ears. “We are circling back to the other side so that no one comes after you. Most men are tied up or locked in closets, but let’s not waste any more time. If you need us to get back inside, though, it might take longer.”

Oh, that’s definitely the last thing Chloe wants.

“Don't. We'll figure this out on our own" she says, the adrenaline of the impending action already coursing in her veins. “Ella, you go-"

“Oh my God!” Ella yelps as she jumps on the spot, earning a few side glances from other waiters, then in a lower voice, “Rae-Rae, what are you doing here?”

“Uhm, Ella? Don’t take this the wrong way but we have a job to do and I don’t have the luxury to freak out about... whatever this is.”

Ella rolls her eyes and grips her arm again to pull her toward a more isolated corner, away from the other servers. On stage, Dylan is showing Lucifer’s collar to a few of the more interested guests to explain how exactly he managed to _tame_ an angel, with the same ease and practicality one might use to show how to install a TV set (“Remember, you must never take it off" and "You can even set it at regular intervals, if you wish" and “24/7 surveillance, no big deal with the means you have, I'm sure!”).

“Okay, listen, just show yourself to her and let’s get on with it. Help me out here" Ella says to no one, staring at the empty space next to her.

“Is this about that... ghost you told me about?” Chloe asks, her patience faltering. “Ella, I'm sorry, but now is not the time to-"

“She's not a ghost" Ella interrupts her, her hands flailing in front of her. “I mean, I thought she was but she isn’t. Lucifer told me only recently. She's- come on, of course she knows she doesn’t have to scream!”

“Why would I scream?” Chloe inquires, then a short teenage girl with a bowl cut and heavy, dark eye makeup appears out of thin air next to Ella, and okay, she would have screamed if she could have.

“What the-"

“Azrael, angel of Death. A pleasure" the girl cuts her off abruptly, before turning back to Ella with intent as if she just got rid of a bug crawling up her gothic dress. “Now listen, before you do anything, I thought I’d show myself to inform you that there are snipers all along the upper gallery.”

“What?” Ella and Chloe gasp in unison. Slowly, they turn their gaze up and squint in the darkness. Every now and then, something faintly glimmers: barrels of guns pointed inward at the central area below. Maybe they got in later, maybe they were hidden there from the start; they don’t know.

“Yep. So if you want to save my brother, you’d better send someone to take care of them" the girl – _Azrael_ – concludes.

“O-okay, uhm, guys?” Ella whispers to the side. “Change of plans: you have to go upstairs and clear the gallery, we have snipers looking down at us. If we move now, they’ll kill us or Lucifer or both.”

“_Jesus_” they hear Dan breathe out. “Okay, we’re on it. But who the hell were you talking to?”

“Oh, Dan, it’s so cute when you don’t get it” comes Maze’s voice, completely normal and unfazed, of course.

“Thanks?”

“Just do it" Ella snaps, before turning back to Azrael with a knowing smile. “I thought you couldn’t change the course of events in the human world, Rae-Rae.”

“I can’t stand in the way of deadly force, no" the angel agrees, crossing her arms over her chest and smirking. “But nothing stops me from sharing what I _see_. Besides, Amenadiel’s trial is a bore; I don’t know why Remiel had to make such a big deal about the whole thing.”

In the pause that follows, Chloe finds her voice again.

“You’re- you’re one of Lucifer’s siblings?” she asks, reminding herself that if they make it out alive, she’ll have to find out why exactly Ella knows _the angel of Death_ and why is it that she looks so... well, tiny and cute and not at all intimidating.

Azrael seems to fully acknowledge her now for the first time, turning to stare at her with a piercing, studying gaze. This “girl" is as ancient as the very concept of death itself, Chloe realizes, and the thought is unsettling to say the least, despite how used she should be to this sort of thing.

“And you’re the mortal he came back here for, aren't you?” the angel asks, and Chloe fears there might be an accusation in her question, but when she nods wordlessly, Azrael offers her a soothing smile. And Chloe thinks she gets it, suddenly. Death should be nothing if not soothing, and kind.

“You’ll save him, right? You’ll take care of him for me?” Lucifer’s sister asks. Chloe just nods again, a dry sob stuck in her throat. Azrael turns her gaze to the stage, anger and sadness alternating in silence inside her old eyes.

“Good" she concludes, then disappears.

When Ella and Chloe turn back to the stage, they can see that the guests who went up have now returned to their seats, some huddled in small groups to discuss.

“So, one million. Who offers more?” Dylan asks with his arms spread wide and a smile on his face, but what follows is silence. Lucifer’s chuckle gets rewarded with a yank of the chain that chokes him for a moment, but a pleased smirk appears on his face afterwards, and despite how reckless it is to provoke his captors like this, Chloe loves him for it.

“I know the guy won’t be happy about it, but I have to say, it’s a relief to see that no one is bidding" Ella whispers next to her. “Good to know these people still have a bit of decency.”

And it’s a relief indeed, because Lucifer has suffered enough humiliation already without having to hear people try to quantify how much he is worth, like a vase or a car or a piece of jewelry. Like a thing. Dylan might act out but Chloe can only be glad if his plan falls apart. She feels afraid for Dan's safety, but he and Maze have the advantage of attacking from behind, and since each sniper is in a different cubicle of the gallery, maybe they’ll manage not to spook the rest as they move along the two sides of the hall.

The whole room seems to be stuck at an impasse, and in this very moment, Lucifer allows his red eyes to wander farther down the hall, beyond the first rows of seats. When he spots them, he locks eyes with Chloe and the red immediately dies, his expression turning hopeful.

“I'm here" Chloe mouths, one hand over her heart. “We’re here.”

“Oh, that’s right! How stupid of me, how could I forget?” Dylan pipes up, because of course he does. “You know, it’s interesting what you end up discovering when you travel the world in search of very rare books.”

He steps closer to Lucifer and reaches one hand out to touch his wings. They puff up so violently that for a moment, Chloe thinks they’ll break the chain. Lucifer’s face suddenly turns red in a way that is now familiar to her, and a bit less to Ella, but her friend is not one to be easily shocked. The red spreads down to his neck slowly, with more difficulty than normal: he struggles to assume his Devil form, muscles straining to summon the strength required to resist electrical shocks that get higher and higher in intensity until Ella has to put a hand over Chloe’s mouth so no one will hear her scream for them to stop.

Panic spreads around the room when the collar still doesn’t seem to be enough to hold him back, and maybe it won’t, maybe this will be the definitive proof that _no one_ should even think of forcing a creature of his might into captivity like this. Then the man with the remote stuffs it in his pocket in exasperation, walks over to Lucifer, and plunges a syringe into the side of his reddening neck.

His wings stop flailing, his Devil face disappears. He remains kneeling, but only because of the man keeping his upper body upright by the chain of the collar. He doesn’t drift into unconsciousness, not really, but when he looks back up at Chloe his eyes struggle to stay focused. When he’s near her, or near any part of her, apparently, his celestial metabolism is still a marvellous thing, but slightly less effective.

Dylan plucks a feather off his wings and stuffs it in his pocket. Lucifer barely even flinches. Then the auctioneer takes out a small knife from the other pocket, cuts his own palm and steps to the edge of the stage, showing the bleeding wound for everyone to see.

“Now tell me... how much are you willing to pay for _this_?” he asks as he places the feather on the cut.

It doesn’t even need to heal completely for the bidding to start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I know the Chloe DNA thing is kinda dumb and I doubt it would work with the show's canon, but I needed it for this story, so this is how it is 😅
> 
> In the next chapter, team Luci to the rescue!


	4. Chapter 4

The Detective is here, and so is Miss Lopez. Lucifer thinks they’re dressed as waiters, and they must be, because they’re standing to the side and no one pays them any mind. They are waiting for something, clearly, but he doesn’t know what.

The bidding reaches ten millions, and doesn’t stop there. He misses bits and pieces in the beginning, then slowly comes back to his senses, each new offer an insult, an unforgivable offense. He used to be shallower, once, and might have even taken pride in discovering how much women would be willing to pay for a night with him (not that he would ever take anyone’s money for that, or pay it, for that matter). He has never minded letting people use his body to get what they desire out of it, but with sex, he gets something in return.

“Ten point two- do I hear ten point three? Who offers more? Now remember, the key is keeping it alive, so that the feathers grow back. Imagine being able to heal your family for generations to come! But if it gets too troublesome, you can always cut the wings off and get rid of it. Just be kind to your very good Dylan who got you this gift before you go, and maybe allow him to take a few feathers for himself, alright?”

_”Humans won’t respect you like we do" Mazikeen told him the day he decided to never go back to Hell. “They’ll fall at your feet, they’ll pleasure you, they’ll entertain you; but in the end, they’ll always betray you.”_

_“Don’t trust these creatures you seem to be so fond of, my angel. Remember, they are too small to look at your light without trying to catch it and bottle it away” Mum told him over a glass of wine in the penthouse, turned bitter and overly philosophical by the alcohol coursing in her human shell of flesh. “If you keep giving so much to them, they’ll only ask for more. Give a finger, and they’ll demand your arm. Give an ounce of your love, and they’ll rip your heart out of your chest.”_

_“Humans have lost their way, brother” Amenadiel said as he walked away from his car and into the night. “Earth is no place to raise my son.”_

_“What do you see in us, Lucifer?” Chloe asked him as she lay naked on the sheets, finally his, finally Lucifer’s for the first time. “Now that I know who you are, I… I have a hard time understanding it.”_

_“I don’t know" he told her, brushing a strand of hair away from her forehead. “I only know what I see in you.”_  
  
_“And what is that?” she wondered, and it was absurd that she didn’t know._

_“Good. I see good, Detective. And believe me, to find so much of it in one person is a miracle rarer than your own birth.”_

The Detective is here, and so is Miss Lopez, and they are both good. But is it enough?

*

“It’s done, Chloe. Go get him. We're coming down.”

Dan’s voice spurs Chloe and Ella into action. They split up and make their way to their respective targets. The guards don’t see a threat in them, so they can get all the way into their personal space.

Ella resorts to her thieving ways: with a feather-like touch, she brushes past the man and snatches the gun from the holster at his hip, then points it at the back of his head and disappears with him beyond one of the entrances. She reappears a moment later after a loud thump that she muffles with a cough, and Chloe can see the man’s feet on the ground, half-hidden by the curtain.

Chloe has the luxury to be louder, because there is only one of them left. She slams a tray right into the side of his face, then attacks him from behind, basically climbing on top of him, and puts her whole weight and strength into choking him into unconsciousness. He has to decide whether he wants to try and reach for the gun or pull her off of him to get the air back into his lungs, but in the end, the surprise factor gives her the edge she needs and he collapses, dragging her to the floor with him.

It’s messy and people notice: the waiters decide they might have been paid enough to witness the craziest auction of their lives, but not enough to risk any harm, so they flee in a panic. The guests turn around on their seats and look at her and Ella in turn. Most importantly, they stop bidding.

“You, step away from him! Everyone else, out of the way!” she shouts, running toward the stage.

She wants to arrest them all, she wants them to rot away in the same kind of cold, hard cell they would have kept Lucifer in if they had managed to buy him, but tonight is not about that, and they don’t have the means. But she’ll remember all of their faces, and Lucifer will, too: with a sketch artist, a little help from Maze’s informant and a good amount of police work, maybe they’ll track them down. If they’re not wanted for something, they’ll wait until they are, or they could have them incriminated for the stolen items they already bought. The whole train of thought seems way too hopeful, so she just files it away for later.

The rich bastards listen to her: the one good thing they will have done at the end of the night. Chloe and Ella avoid them by using the side corridors until they reach the base of the steps that lead to the stage. Ella points her gun at the man with the remote: he lifts his hands up, but still keeps it in his grasp. Chloe points hers at Dylan, then at the man who has been holding the chain, and sees a gun pressed against the back of Lucifer’s head.

“Drop your weapon. _Now_” she barks, still watching Dylan out of the corner of her eye. The auctioneer is clearly trying to retreat until he can disappear backstage, so she hastily takes the decision to walk up and grab him. She presses the gun to his temple, bluffing.

“I see the LAPD has turned to more practical methods" Dylan chuckles, his hands lifted in surrender. “This little angel, or should I say devil, in this case, has certainly hooked his claws into you. Detective Decker, gone rogue!”

“Tell your man to drop his weapon and step away" she insists, ignoring him and the reminder that he knows who she is, that he sent someone to break into her house and use her to take advantage of Lucifer’s one and only weakness. She can see that Lucifer is straining to break free, but with his every movement, the man behind him pulls him backwards and presses the gun forward more firmly.

“Or what? I know you won’t kill me, you don’t have it in you.”

_Tonight I actually might_, she thinks, clearly at her wits' end.

“Detective” Lucifer breathes out, just because he can; one thousand emotions in a word that is only supposed to have one meaning and purpose.

“Lucifer" she echoes, hoping he'll forgive her for taking so long, hoping he’ll _be there_ to forgive her.

Then, everything happens very fast. Ella, fed up with everyone’s refusal to cooperate, approaches the man with the remote until her gun is almost pressed to his forehead, snatches the device from his grip and smashes it to the floor. The man responds to the gesture by swinging a backhanded slap that lands on the side of her face, sending her and her gun rolling on the ground with a shout. Before he can lunge forward to try and pick up the weapon, Chloe shoots him in the leg with no hesitation, leaving him whimpering and cursing in a corner.

Now freed of the threat of being electrocuted, Lucifer loses it and throws caution to the wind, mindless of the fact that he still has a gun pointed at his head. Mustering an energy Chloe didn’t think he could still summon, he growls with the effort of spreading his wings: they give way with a loud noise, chains breaking in pieces, forcing the armed man backward with their sheer force.

The man lets go of the collar, but not of his gun. Furious, he stumbles backwards, lifts it up and puts his finger on the trigger. Chloe lifts hers, aims at his hand, and shoots.

The weapon flies away with a chunk of his flesh as the guy falls to his knees to clutch at his bleeding hand and the hole she left in it. But the commotion distracts her for a moment, and Dylan turns around and tries his luck. Chloe blocks his hand just in time before his pocket knife can come in contact with her eye, shocked by his sudden attack. She thinks of shooting him in the leg, too, with the gun she still clutches in her other hand, but it turns out that she won’t need to.

Lucifer, having freed himself of the collar in the meantime, sweeps Dylan off his feet and tackles him to the ground in a heap of limbs and feathers, until Chloe sees the knife flying in the general direction of the backstage area. Relieved, she steps forward to help him immobilize Dylan so they can leave before one or more guards from the rest of the building manage to get to them.

A noise from behind her startles her, but when she turns back, she sees Maze and Dan running quickly toward them, each of them now armed with an assault rifle they stole from two of the snipers. If she had to guess, Chloe would say the rest of the rifles have been broken in half over Mazikeen’s bent leg. Dan, covered in blood and sweat and sporting a variety of cuts and bruises, runs in Chloe and Lucifer’s direction; Maze, looking almost as good as she did at the beginning of the night, runs to the other side of the stage to check on Ella, still on the floor.

After helping the Latina back to her feet, the demon proceeds to drag the two wounded men still lying on the stage all the way to the glass case left open in a corner. She throws them in, closes it, and locks it with a satisfied smirk.

Finally, they are all back together. Time to get the hell out of here.

Except for the fact that when Chloe turns toward Lucifer, she finds him with his wings curved in front of him, holding Dylan hostage with them. The top feathers have turned razor-sharp all the way to the tip: one is pressed along the man's throat, the other against his stomach. If he presses them further in or flicks them in an outward motion, Dylan will certainly bleed to his death.

“Lucifer, what are you doing?”

One good look at him, and she doesn’t need to be a psychologist to know he’s having some sort of mental breakdown. He’s shaking, and every tremble might turn him into the murderer that he isn’t; his eyes are wide and frantic, every muscle in his body vibrating. It reminds Chloe of the day when he hadn’t slept for an unhealthy amount of time and then started rambling incoherently (or so she thought).

“Stand back, Detective” he tells her, and then, when he sees Dan, Maze and Ella approaching, “Stand back, _all of you!_”

“Please, don’t do this" Chloe begs, slowly tucking the gun she stole between her shirt and the hem of her pants, in the same soothing way she would do to talk a madman out of committing a murder. “Lucifer, this isn’t you. You- you’re tired, and hurt. Please, let me get you home.”

Dylan’s eyes are closed between them, almost in acceptance. Lucifer’s turn angrier.

“They hurt her" he explains, swiftly nodding at the bruise Ella now has on her cheek. “And he almost stabbed you. He tried to sell me like I was _his_, like I could be _anyone’s_. He forced me on my knees and I _never_ kneel, not anymore, to _no one_.”

She chokes on the words, but tries anyway, “I know, I understand, I-"

“You _understand_? He wanted to sell me like a property!” he shouts, his eyes flaming red with the last word. “I'm not a thing! I'm not a circus freak! I'm not a pet! I'm- I’m the Devil, and I might be a monster, but I'm a _person_, too!”

“Of course you are!” Ella intervenes, stepping forward from the side. “You’re not a monster, Lucifer, you’re our friend! Let us help you, come on, let’s _go_.”

Lucifer pauses for a moment, but then, he focuses on Chloe with a new kind of resolve.

“Look me in the eye and tell me he doesn’t deserve it” he demands, and she freezes.

She hesitates for a brief moment; brief, but too long. She looks at the man she loves, at what they have done to him, at what this _man_ has done to him. She knows they can make him pay for other crimes, but not this, because this crime can never be reported. In the end, she knows she’ll stick to the ideas of right and wrong she has always had (_I want justice just like you, Lucifer, but there is a right way, and there is a wrong way_); but for just a second, she stares at Dylan and falters.

“Tell me he doesn’t deserve it, Chloe.”

And the thing is… doesn’t he?

*

The Detective is here, and so are Miss Lopez and Maze and Dan, and they are all good. But Lucifer is not. Not tonight. Not for _him_.

“What are you afraid of, Detective? Of another black mark on my soul? Am I not a murderer already?”

He knows his tone is mocking, and maybe mean, and can recognize the clenching of Chloe’s jaw and the way her eyes flash with hurt. Good. Maybe she should turn away for this, like she did on that bloody staircase.

“Lucifer, you know I’m with you on this, but I can tell you're going to take forever to make up your mind and we _really_ don’t have time for your self-pitying monologues" Maze pipes up, trying a different angle like the sneaky demon that she is. Lucifer doesn’t want to treat any of them too harshly because they came here for him, they risked their lives to rescue him, but they just don’t _get_ it.

“Leave then" he simply urges, spiteful.

“You think we’ll leave you here after fighting off I don’t even know how many men for you?” Dan interjects, stepping past Chloe to get closer. Lucifer didn’t think he had it in him, to put his neck on the line like this for the Devil. He can see his bruises and feels a stronger sense of respect for him (not that he’ll ever say it).

“I know you’re angry" Dan continues, his hands up in a calming gesture. “I know what it _means_ to be angry. I won’t pretend to understand what all this must have felt like, or what it means to be _you_, but… if it’s really important to you, if it’s what you _need_… I'll help you punish him, Lucifer. Isn’t that your whole deal?”

Lucifer flinches. The motion makes him aware of the blood that is starting to coat the tip of his right wing, from a small cut forming along Dylan’s throat. Suddenly, he doesn’t like the idea of it being there where it doesn’t belong, almost as foreign and unwelcome as those people's fingers on his feathers. No, they were meant for something greater than this. It feels dirty, _he_ feels dirty.

Because it’s the wrong pair of wings, for this job. Daniel is right. Dylan is not so special as to be killed by an angel. Like all the criminals that came before him and that will come after, he is a nobody, and he deserves to be punished by the Devil for his sins. Lucifer is no _dear little angel_, like he’s been called the whole day. Well, he is, but… he feels no shame in being something else too, now; no contradiction in being Prince of Darkness and Lightbringer, lord of the shadows and star of the morning. Dylan needed him to be an angel to be _sellable_, and Lucifer feels like he owes the man a taste of the side he wanted to keep buried for his own self-interest, his _greed_.

“Grab him" he tells Dan, before getting his wings out of the way and shove Dylan in his direction. The man tries to run but Dan locks his arms around his neck until he slips into temporary oblivion.

Lucifer folds his wings back into himself with a wince (after being pressed together in the case and then by chains, they pulse from aching numbness) and takes one step forward to follow his rescue team (the fact that he needed one is foreign in both a good and a bad way). He’s been kneeling for a while and only now he’s made aware of the pain under his right foot, the one he used to kick at the glass before the auction. So he flinches and stumbles from it, but the Detective is with him in an instant, draping one of his arms over her shoulders before being mirrored by Miss Lopez on the other side.

“My two favorite girls" he jokes, earning two eye rolls and a glare from Maze.

The three of them follow Dan and Maze, who are carrying Dylan's unconscious body in the same way. Before going backstage, Chloe ducks down for a moment to pick up one half of the collar he removed from his neck. He doesn’t understand why, but doesn’t feel like it’s the right time to ask.

They follow a corridor littered with tied up men, some completely unconscious, some starting to stir, and others fully awake and struggling. Mazikeen doesn’t even stop walking as she kicks them in the face or stomach so as not to slow their escape, and Lucifer thinks it’s a shame she did all this dressed as a waiter, of all things, because to imagine her perform such a feat in one of her usual leather attires is much more satisfying. He has the feeling there is a whole building full of men currently recovering from her fury. And oh, apparently Daniel helped.

The corridor finally leads them outside into an alley lined with dumpsters. The relief of breathing in the night air and being in the open and under the sky again is overwhelming, and it would be very easy for him to let his tired eyelids droop and shut, but he won’t. Not yet. He tells Chloe and Ella that he’s fine walking and keeps the wincing to a minimum, because he’s done feeling weak. They protest, but only for a brief moment – they don’t want to anger him, he knows, and the thought only makes him feel more fragile.

When they reach the two cars the others came with, Dan’s and Maze’s, Dylan gets unceremoniously tossed inside Daniel’s trunk. Lucifer leans against it once it’s closed, shifting his weight on his uninjured foot. His neck and wrists feel sore and his whole body screams at him to just let it rest, but he ignores it, just like he tries not to think about how he’s half-naked in the middle of the street in a part of the city he doesn’t know (abandoned and crumbling away like the theater hall).

“Maze, get our friend home so she can put some ice on that bruise" he tells the demon. Ella’s cheek is turning a darker shade of purple and he feels his heart squeeze painfully at the sight. She faced a man twice her weight with no hesitation, for him, and put an end to his torture and misery when she smashed the taser's remote; his unlikely savior and even more unlikely friend, the believer who believes in _him_.

“Miss Lopez- _Ella_. Thank you, for what you did back there" he tells her, _needs_ to tell her. “I'm really sorry you got hurt.”

“Have you taken even one look at me, man?” Dan objects, lifting his arms in the air. Ella chuckles, and Lucifer decides it’s a much better sound than whatever answer he might have given, so he leaves it at that.

“Don’t even mention it, buddy" she replies with a wave of her hand, like it’s no big deal. “I finally got a taste of the real action and got myself a scar to prove it! But seriously, I'm just glad you’re okay.”

She hugs him then, her impossibly tiny body pressed against his chest, her arms wrapped around his middle. It hurts, as if even the smallest contact can electrocute him now, his skin twitching and oversensitive. He doesn’t say a word about it, and lets her.

“Come on, little warrior” Mazikeen urges, looking at Ella with a proud smile once she disentangles herself from him. Then the demon turns to Lucifer, a mischievous glint in her eye, and says, “You have fun for me too, yeah?”

Lucifer nods in anticipation. On either side of him, Chloe and Dan fidget nervously, but don’t say anything. Dan walks around the car, opens the door, leaves the assault rifle on the passenger seat and settles in front of the wheel with an expression of finality, as if Lucifer is leading him to his execution, even though he was the one who offered his help. Lucifer has ever only shown him his wings, never his Devil face, and he won’t subject him to it if he doesn’t feel ready to. They just need to find somewhere quiet and isolated and then both Chloe and Dan can just wait in the car if they want.

The Detective takes his hand silently and guides him to the backseat with her as Dan starts the car.

“Where should I go?” Daniel asks, looking at them in the rearview mirror. Even Chloe turns to stare at him expectantly, but Lucifer doesn’t have the energy to think. It’s like a thread is holding him together at this point: he just needs release from this underlying anger that he can’t shake off.

“I don’t know, just- somewhere no one will see us" he answers, allowing himself to slightly relax against the seat. Dan nods and starts driving.

Slowly, without him even realizing it, Lucifer’s body sags to the side and molds itself along Chloe’s curves, his head sliding lower to rest on her shoulder. She wraps one arm around him to guide him closer without saying a word, until he’s trembling in the crook of her neck, one hand fisted in her hair. He’s not even crying. He’s just… shaking, pent-up energy rattling his bones like a mounting earthquake, the phantom of the multiple artificially-induced tremors he endured.

“Shh, it’s okay" she cooes, caressing his naked back. “It’s over. I got you now.”

“You- you'll let me do this, right?” he panics, worrying for a moment that they’ll just drive aimlessly until he inevitably falls asleep and get him home, if he doesn’t ask again. “Let him see me? I need it, Chloe, I need to feel like myself again. Every time I tried, they-"

“I know" she cuts him off, her hand carefully avoiding the back of his bruised neck to card through his hair, a gentleness and mercy that don’t go unnoticed. “Just promise me you won’t hurt him. You know I can’t let you do that.”

Lucifer knows she can’t, and loves her all the more for it. He knows he scared her, back on the stage, but she’s still here; his moral compass when he loses the way, but without ever forcing him to be something he is not. They are past that, now.

“I promise. I _swear_” he vows, pressing a tentative kiss behind her ear.

Chloe pulls back suddenly and kisses him on the lips with a desperation he has rarely found in her (maybe only once, when he came back and knocked at her door, her mouth frantic and demanding when she dragged him inside). He is tired, so tired, but never for this, especially when she needs to feel him so badly. He would pull her in his lap if they were alone, find comfort and release inside her (and oh, he will); but for now, he settles for the feel of her mouth around his tongue as he responds in kind, his fingers gripping her hair almost furiously, welcoming the distraction for the balm that it is.

This seems like Chloe’s time to fall apart a little, and he lets her, her fingers mapping his forehead, his cheekbones, his lips when she pulls away, although he knows there is nothing different there – _Careful with his face, I need him to look immaculate_.

“You’re here. You’re safe" she says, and Lucifer is not sure if she’s trying to comfort him or herself, but he lets the words wash over him and dives into the kiss again, his whole body feeling raw and exposed like a fresh wound but he’s in Chloe’s arms now, a place where nothing can happen, a place he didn’t think he deserved to call his own, for a long time.

A loud thump from the trunk breaks them apart, followed by another, and another. The bastard is awake and kicking. Dan looks at them in the rearview mirror (Lucifer assumes he has been staring straight ahead this whole time, but wouldn’t be surprised of the contrary) and seems to come to the conclusion that their search has to end immediately. Around them, there are mostly buildings under construction, probably future malls that will sprout from the ground up to try and give new life to a rough, discarded area. It’s late, a weeknight, and there isn’t a soul around apart from theirs and the one Lucifer is about to give a glimpse of the eternal damnation that awaits it.

Dan stops the car in front of an alley between two buildings, a dead end. Lucifer squeezes Chloe’s hand and gets out of the car when he does, soon followed by the Detective. She holds the half of the collar in one hand (he hadn’t noticed it on the car seat behind her) and the stolen gun in the other, pointing it at the trunk as the two men approach it to open it.

They drag a struggling Dylan all the way to the end of the alley, Lucifer holding him by the shoulders with a hand over his mouth, Dan by his feet, with Chloe trailing behind. Once at the end, Dan lets go of the man’s feet and Lucifer shoves him into the wall, pinning him there with a hand around his throat. There are no lamp posts close by, and the light of the ones along the main road doesn’t help much, but he trusts his companions will adjust. He has already. Hell has no artificial lights, and when night falls, Lucifer is more at ease than in the day.

“Now,” he starts, pinning the man a little higher just to enjoy the scrambling of his toes against the concrete, “I believe I promised you a double hospital room for you and your brother, didn’t I?”

Dylan seems to be at that stage Lucifer recognizes well: he’s scared, but he’s the kind of man who takes pride in not showing it. His nails dig into Lucifer’s wrist, not to get him off but almost to challenge him, telling him _I'm ready, bring it on_.

“I'm not weak like him" he has the audacity to croak. “Your wings didn’t faze me and _this_\- this won’t, either.”

But Lucifer remembers the way he had managed to startle him the first time, when they ended up sedating him, and it had been only his face. There is no electrical current stopping him now, no needle at the ready, and Dylan knows it. Lucifer’s angel wings awake the craving for the divine that lies in most humans, their longing for a spiritual connection; but his Devil form feeds on what's rotten and festering in them, now that it’s no longer a projection of his self-hatred.

“Oh, we'll see about that” he grins, feeling the fire start to burn under his skin, begging to come out and play. “You’ll find I'm nothing if not a Devil of my word.”


	5. Chapter 5

“Wait.”

Chloe’s voice stops him from behind before he can start changing. Lucifer freezes. If she and Daniel want to get back to the car, of course he'll give them a moment to do so. But instead, Chloe only steps closer, Dan keeping watch from the other side.

“First, you’ll tell me who else knows about this" the Detective demands from Dylan, holding the part of the leather collar she carried here in front of the man’s eyes. The light of the moon catches on it in a way that lets Lucifer know it’s not just leather, but partially glass. He squints at it, trying to see what’s inside.  
  
“No one” Dylan replies.

“Don’t lie to me" Chloe urges, and Dylan, almost choking with it, _scoffs_.

“What’s the difference, anyway? You’ll still let him try and mess with my head. What’s in it for me?”

On his right, Lucifer sees Chloe hesitate, but on his left, Daniel steps in and up to the challenge.

“How about I don’t break your arms and legs _before_ he messes with your head, if you say the truth, mm? I broke a lot of them already, pal, so believe me, I'll sleep just as easily tonight.”

“_Daniel_” Lucifer can’t help but chuckle in appreciation. How is it that Mazikeen hasn’t already claimed him for her own? In moments like this, he sees a bit of her unapologetic fierceness in him.

The prospect of serious physical pain should feel more real than some devilish trick, so when Dylan speaks again, Lucifer trusts that it will be the truth, although he still doesn’t fully understand what this is about.

“No one" the man repeats, then keeps going to provide them with more context. “I paid someone to steal it but I didn’t explain what it was for. And I didn’t want anyone at the auction to know where it came from so that if something happened to it, they’d come back to me and pay me for another lock.”

When Lucifer finally sees it, inside a long, tube-shaped case attached to the front of the collar, the implication behind it horrifies him.

“You had someone break into her house?” he growls, tightening his grip and slamming Dylan’s back against the wall with renewed strength, fueled by his anger.

“Lucifer" Chloe whispers, warning him to measure his movements. He relaxes slightly, feeling the air flow back inside the man’s throat under his palm, letting Dylan’s feet touch the ground. He feels like the discovery should shock him, and it probably will later, once again reshaping the implications and inner workings of his Detective-induced vulnerability. But now, now he’s just processing the idea of a stranger violating the sanctity of Chloe’s house, where her offspring _lives_.

“So, you didn’t share it with any of the guests when they came on stage? Why was it that it made him vulnerable?” Chloe continues, staring at Dylan intently for any indication of lying. Lucifer realizes that she’s trying to tie up loose ends before this man becomes useless, before he becomes unable to explain anything in a way that makes sense. She’s trying to protect herself and Lucifer from future trouble, if one of the potential buyers ever decides to look for him again and take advantage of his weak spot.

“No" the auctioneer insists. “I just told them to never take the collar off. I told you, it’s a piece of information that could have earned me more money in time.”

“Money, money, money, right? It’s _all_ about money with you" Lucifer muses, tilting his head to the side, inspecting him like he let other people inspect _him_. And what he sees isn’t worth a lot.

“How did you know about who he was in the first place?” Chloe asks. “How did you find out about me?”

“Oh, that’s a very good question, Detective, and the answer is even better" Dylan replies, his voice choked but playful – Lucifer is so fed up with his smugness that the only reason he’s still putting up with it is to let her conclude her line of questioning. “I wasn’t in L.A. at the time, but my brother had a soft spot for me. He called me to tell me of the angel wings he'd set up in his house, asked me to come and see them, so we could _stare_ at them together. So I could _believe_, too. By-"

He clears his throat, out of breath after these many words uttered with a hand tight around his neck, his chest heaving. Lucifer rolls his eyes, unfazed, but Dan steps closer to Dylan and looks at him pointedly.

“I've got this" he says encouragingly. When Lucifer lets go of the man’s throat, Dan pulls him away from the wall, positions himself behind him and forces Dylan’s arms behind his back with his own, keeping him locked in place.

“You were saying?” he urges, nudging him with his own shoulder.

“By the time I arrived the wings were gone, of course, and he was beyond saving" Dylan resumes, getting some sort of twisted satisfaction from letting them know how smart he has been. “With a little digging, I found out who owned the container they were stolen from, but I didn’t know if he had a new pair. I left it for a time, travelled the world for business, but I couldn’t get it out of my head, how much they would be worth, how much an _angel_ would fetch on the black market. So, recently I… had Mr. Morningstar’s apartment bugged.”

He pauses, reveling in how incredulous Lucifer and Chloe look. Then he stops talking directly to Chloe and focuses on Lucifer.

“I still had no clue about the wings, but in the meantime, your little Detective asked you, plain and simple, ‘How is it that sometimes you bleed, and other times you don’t? What is the difference?’ And you answered” he mocks, smirking even as Dan tightens his hold on his arms to chastise him. “I can’t imagine giving such a valuable information to anyone, let alone such a dull-looking woman.”

Lucifer surges forward, furious out of his mind.

“You’ll watch your mouth when you speak of her" he growls with fire in his eyes and a voice that even now might make the pillars of Hell rattle down below, gripping the man by the lapels of his suit. Dylan squirms under the red of his gaze and behind him, Dan gasps, but keeps his ground.

“What- what about the wings?” he hears Chloe whisper, and when he retreats and looks at her, he sees sadness on her features, and the slow horror of a realization forming. He turns back to Dylan and sees him smiling, enjoying this last bit of suffering he’s causing, knowing he'll suffer in return either way.

“Well, there was a bunch of stuff about them _changing_ that had me worried for a time, and a lot of other things I _really_ had no interest in getting involved with. But then, mmm, what was it that you said, some time later?” he addresses Chloe again. “You picked up the phone and cried ‘He's gone, Linda. He went back there. I saw them, I can’t believe I never saw them before. How could I not see he was an angel all along?’ So when he came back, I admit, I took a chance with the whole hair thing. And it worked!”

Chloe closes her eyes in anguished defeat, swaying on the spot. Lucifer forgets all about his anger for a moment and steps closer to her to cup her cheeks and join their foreheads together, this little gesture they still do sometimes to keep each other grounded.

“Don’t let him get into your head. It doesn’t matter" he tells her, before reaching down to gently take the broken collar from her hand and drop it to the ground. “_None of it_.”

“He hurt you because of me” Chloe whispers, forcing back tears, trying to look away. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know he was listening, I'm _sorry_-"

“Let me punish him now" Lucifer urges, his thumbs firm on her cheekbones. “For you and me both.”

Chloe nods, and it’s all the permission he needs. He steps away from her and looks at Dan past Dylan’s face.

“Daniel, step aside or close your eyes, up to you.”

Dan stares back at him for a long moment.

“No. I want to see" he says in the end, his jaw set tight. “I want to see you for who you are.”

Lucifer hesitates: clearly Dan has picked up on the fact that he’s been merciful to him, that he has tried to soften the blow of his identity by showing him the sugar-coated part of it. Lucifer knows that saying you are ready and _being_ ready are two entirely different things, but unlike Linda and Chloe at the time, Daniel knows what to expect and wants to get it over with. And especially after tonight, Lucifer should probably give him more credit than he usually does.

“Very well, then" he agrees. At his side, Chloe doesn’t move a muscle, either, and it’s such an exhilarating feeling, to know that he can do this and that she will still love him afterwards. This bends her principles a little bit, he knows, but doesn’t break them completely: it’s just going to kickstart the process of eternal self-loathing the man will eventually fall prey to in Hell.

When he closes his eyes and sighs, the weariness of his limbs catches up to him for a moment, making him sway. He senses the Detective’s hesitation, her attempt to take one step forward and support him, but then he manages to steady himself and she retreats. His sore feathery wings shift and ripple inside him to change into something grotesque and medieval, of thin skin mapped with webs of veins and long black claws at the top. They emerge out and into this world as he shudders, his eyes still closed, his slowly transforming body feeling as hot as the sun inside. And unlike the others, these wings don’t hurt.

When he opens his eyes, Dan is forcing himself to breathe through his nose and not look away, wide-eyed but still here, still sane. Between them, Dylan isn’t faring so well, although not for lack of trying: he has turned his face to the side, trembling, only vaguely glancing in his direction to try and get used to the sight bit by bit. He’s so proud, and Lucifer understands pride; it will only be more satisfying to see it crumble.

“How much do you think _this_ is worth?” he asks sarcastically to the man who tried to sell him. _Twelve million? Did I hear twelve and a half? Oh no, that just won’t do, you can do better, my friends!_

“Look at me" he orders, one red finger turning the man’s chin in his direction in a mockery of tenderness. “I'm giving you the whole show, unlike your brother. Don’t be rude.”

“That’s- that’s it? Is this the best you got?” Dylan stutters, giving himself some sort of pep talk. “I'm- I’m not a child, I’m not scared of some monster under the bed!”

Lucifer throws his bald head back and laughs, a guttural, throaty sound that startles all three people surrounding him, a sound that had the demons of Hell tremble on the spot, hoping not to be the recipients of the fury that usually came after.

“Oh, I won’t be hiding under your bed, darling” he grins. “Soon, I will be all you ever think about. You see, when I got this face back, I was talking an unrepentant sinner into admitting his fault. I couldn’t allow him to just trick the system and end up where he didn’t belong, oh no, _not on my watch_.”

He looks up at Daniel, both to see his reaction at the callback to their favorite action saga and to make sure he understands who he is talking about, and who he did that for. The man gives him a small smile, then shakes his head in disbelief at the joke, still visibly uncomfortable but somehow soothed by the fact that underneath it all, he's still looking at his ex wife’s sassy civilian consultant. Lucifer quickly checks on Chloe, and finds her fascinated more than scared, enthralled by his tale. She can’t know where he’s going with this, not completely. There are some things he still doesn’t tell her, about the time he spent away.

“It worked. I found him in Hell, when I went back" he continues, hoping this level of detail about a person both Dan and Chloe technically knew won’t scare them off. “And I realized, some people need a gentle push. Some people can’t be trusted to judge themselves fairly, but make no mistake, it’s not my place, either. Oh, I'm no judge. But I had a lot of time on my hands down there, and I mean _a lot_. So I started experimenting, and I learned something new, this time around. I learned that all that is required of me is one… simple… question.”

He leans forward, locking eyes with the man, hypnotizing his soon-to-be-damned soul with the fiery dance in his eyes.

“Tell me, Dylan… what is it you most _regret_?”

The fog that clouds his victim's gaze is the same as always, and so is his struggle to stop the truth from coming out, but the question reaches deeper, not to draw out things he wants to do, but to shame him into admitting those he wishes he _didn’t_ do. It happened almost by mistake, in Hell; just a curiosity, really, as he made his rounds of torture supervision. Turns out it works like a charm. It would in any form, of course, but for this man he'll go all in.

“I… I…”

“_Yes?_”

He can sense the surprise radiating off of the Detective, but there is a reason he never uses this on suspects on their cases, despite how useful it could be. Desires are things you might not know you crave, but once you admit it, you can achieve them if you allow it to yourself. Regrets are irreparable by definition. Nothing to lose your sleep over if you regret eating one chocolate bar too many, or not buying a dress for lack of self-confidence, or saying something mean you didn’t really think. But the big ones, once they’re out, can consume you. Not declaring your love to a person who isn’t there anymore to hear it. Falling asleep at the wheel and killing someone. Making the wrong investment and losing everything.

“No, _please_, I… I regret gambling! Our mother needed money for her treatment and I- I had too many debts!” Dylan finally confesses, squirming. “Carmen did his best, but it wasn’t enough and she- she died because of me!”

Lucifer feels pity, he does, but for this mother, who couldn’t count on her son because of his insatiable greed. It’s cruel, all of this, but this man has shown him a cruelty that doesn’t deserve any less.

“And now no amount of wealth is ever enough, isn’t it so? No matter how rich you get, it’s too late" he connects the dots, tilting his head to the side, and goes for the kill. “She will be so hurt, when you'll see her again.”

“W-what?”

“Oh, not _her_, per se" he clarifies. “Well, assuming she was good, and I have a feeling she was. If I had to guess, you'll see the version of her you dread the most. She’ll die again, and again, and again, right in front of your eyes while you play Black Jack in Vegas. How does that make you feel, to know what eternity has in store for you?”

After her period in Hell, Charlotte turned her life around and managed to go to Heaven, because she was _good_, underneath it all. After his instant in Hell, Malcolm came back starved for material pleasures and haunted, lacking empathy, emotion, humanity, because he was _bad_, deep down. Dylan won’t need to go to Hell to know what awaits him, thanks to Lucifer’s _intervention_, and if he read him well enough, the guy won’t be able to bear this knowledge.

“N-no, no, you- you’re _lying_!” he whimpers. “You’re trying to trick me!”

“The Devil never lies, my dear" Lucifer tells him, before grabbing his chin and forcing him to stare at him again, keeping him close in a way that won't allow Dan to inadvertently meet his gaze. “Look me in the eye and see for yourself.”

Lucifer himself doesn’t know what people see in his eyes, when he summons their visions of Hell. His guess about Dylan’s loop might have been wrong, or not completely right. But it’s fine, he doesn’t need to know it for it to work. Embracing all that he is had its perks. He carries the Underworld inside, but not in the same way he used to, not like a weight dragging him down. Just like his wings carry Heaven in their glow, but not as the punishment he used to see in them before.

And just like that, it’s done. _I don’t want to go there_, Dylan begs, terrified. _Please, tell me how to fix it_. But that isn’t Lucifer’s job. He'll let him wonder that for the rest of his life.

He closes his eyes and inhales deeply, enjoying this sense of power and control, things he was stripped of for barely a day, but too suddenly and cruelly, taunted with the prospect of losing his freedom forever, of becoming a possession. Lucifer couldn’t even stand being defined by his Father’s wishes. The thought of being _owned_ by anyone was and is unacceptable.

When he changes again to the sound of the man’s crying, his ordinary form is left drained by the whole ordeal. His legs give out from underneath him, but two familiar arms catch him in time before he can hit the ground. He’s still not used to it, to falling without the crashing landing that should follow.

“Holy fuck" he thinks he hears Daniel mutter, followed by movements – maybe Dylan being left on the ground to curl into a ball with visions he’ll never be able to forget. What should they do with him now? Leave him here, drop him in front of a hospital? He doesn’t have the strength to think long enough to decide.

His eyelids flutter to stay open, but it’s so tiring, and all the soreness he felt before comes back with a vengeance, under his foot and around his wrists and neck and knees and wings tucked inside. The Detective will have to leave him be for a while, for all this to pass, but he doesn’t mind the feeling of her hand pushing his messy hair away from his forehead, the sensation of his head being cradled in her lap as she rocks him sweetly.

“Rest now" she says, kissing his temple, his closing eyelids, the tip of his nose. “I'll take care of everything.”

And Lucifer knows she will.

*

Amenadiel finds them all around the table in Linda’s backyard ten days later, on a sunny, lazy Sunday they couldn’t help but take advantage of. They just finished lunch, and talking about whatever comes to their mind is natural and easy, a cure to everyone’s dark thoughts. On the meticulously cut grass of the backyard further away, Trixie plays with Charlie (which means waving toys in front of his face until he decides to crawl forward to grab them; he’s almost a year now, an almost walking reminder of how many months Lucifer missed).

Chloe sees Amenadiel walking down the patio steps before Lucifer does, and judging by the look on the black man's face, she knows he’s about to break the spell they carefully managed to craft, keeping Lucifer bubbly and distracted with random conversations. Amenadiel has a big heart but he’s not exactly great at reading a room. Besides, Chloe can’t really blame him if somehow he got word of what happened and now wants answers to his worries.

“Brother,” Amenadiel says to let his presence known, muting the laughter going around the table as if with the push of a button, “Azrael told me what happened.”

Lucifer stops mid-sentence, or better, mid-drag, marijuana joint almost to his lips and calves perched over one corner of the table where he sits at the head of it, with Chloe on one side and Ella on the other. He has his shirt sleeves rolled up in a way he rarely concedes, too fond of his impeccable attire, and more buttons undone than usual, the light breeze ruffling his hair making him look younger, and strikingly so.

“Ah, yes, Miss Lopez told me they had a little chat" he replies with a wave of his hand, before lowering the joint to his lips with his eyes closed.

It relaxes him, and none of them is going to take that from him, least of all Chloe. If she didn’t make a point of keeping an eye on him almost 24/7, she’s pretty sure he would have snorted his way into a stupor by now, so she’ll take this small mercy from him and let him get high on a Sunday afternoon surrounded by his friends if he wishes, because it’s not like he doesn’t deserve a break. They are in an open space with the kids at a safe distance – she wouldn’t have allowed it otherwise.

Amenadiel walks to the table and quietly sits next to Linda, his hands in his lap, before saying, “I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner.”

Chloe sees Dan flash him an understanding smile, and Linda take one of his hands under the table.

“Oh, don’t be,” Lucifer shrugs, “we all had the time of our lives while you were gone, didn’t we, pals?”

Right, well, the only thing Chloe doesn’t like is how his sarcasm turns up a notch when he’s in his own world, and often in a self-deprecating way. An awkward silence settles around the table, saved by Mazikeen’s boasting nature.

“Well, Espinoza and I kicked some serious ass, so there’s that" she smiles proudly, lifting her beer bottle in the air in Dan’s direction to get him to toast with her. Dan hesitates, fearing it might seem inappropriate, then shrugs and lifts his own bottle to meet her halfway.

“Turns out folks are into pet angels now, who knew, eh?” Lucifer blurts out – _Oh boy, here we go_. “I mean, they should have known I would be _so_ high maintenance. Nothing but the best hair products to keep these bad boys in check, not to mention alcohol expenses.”

Chloe automatically lifts a hand to his forehead to brush a dark stray lock to the side, not knowing how to answer to that if not with a show of care. This bitterness in him is painful to behold, but joking is his way of coping with how angry he still is, despite the punishment he delivered. Justice, _divine_ justice, has somehow been served, but she knows it doesn’t help erase the memory of the experience. Lucifer tilts his head back toward her and smiles, his eyelids half-closed, like a pleased cat sunbathing.

Amenadiel is visibly uncomfortable – to be fair, Lucifer might be allowed to joke about it but it doesn’t necessarily mean they should be, too.

“Has the man been… taken care of?” asks the angel, looking around the table to invite anyone else to answer in Lucifer’s place.

“He won’t trouble us again" Chloe tells him, unwilling to share more, at least now, when they’re trying to enjoy the peace and quiet of Linda’s house, basking in the simple ability to keep each other company. Dylan was indeed dropped in front of the ER before Dan sped away into the night. Considering his state (nothing but Hell on his mind, and his mother, and inescapable damnation awaiting), she doubts he'll ever be able to share the new secret related to Lucifer’s vulnerability and her involvement in it.

“Imagine if he'd taken you, brother" Lucifer pipes up with an amused smirk. “You would have just _bored_ him into releasing you.”

“Luce, don’t be mean" Ella chastises him softly from the other side of the table, before giving Amenadiel an apologetic shake of her head. Lucifer scoffs and looks up at the sky, taking another long drag.

“It’s okay" Amenadiel says, ever the forgiving kind. The two brothers share a look across the table, and Lucifer seems to relax, losing this edge of mockery he’s shielding himself with.

“Anyhoo,” he says to fill the silence, chuckling at how funny the word sounds, “there _is_ a silver lining of sorts, I realized. Turns out even a teeny tiny piece of the Detective can make me vulnerable. Now I know I'll have to wash my sheets _very_ carefully when you sleep over, darling. A lot of Detective DNA to get rid of from those", he concludes, wiggling his eyebrows at Chloe seductively.

Chloe buries her face in her hands, embarrassed. Ella almost chokes on the wine she just drank from her glass, coughing. Mazikeen throws her head back and laughs. Amenadiel looks utterly confused, and Linda grins quietly to herself, motherly fondness in her gaze at how cheeky Lucifer can’t help but be.

“For the love of God, Lucifer" Dan is the only one to comment, his hands in the air in an exasperated motion.

“Could you not mention Him, Daniel? It kills my high. Besides, I was talking about her hair.” A pause. “Among other things.”

“_Lucifer_” Chloe giggles, shooting him an outraged look, but it’s impossible to stay mad at him when he’s this way, all playful and carefree as if he didn’t carry the weight of three worlds on his shoulders, Earth and Heaven and Hell constantly pulling him in different directions.

“Sweetheart, did I make you blush? You know that’s a point of pride for me. Come here" Lucifer tells her, before dropping his legs on the ground and leaning closer to her, nudging at the hands she’s still keeping over her face with his nose. Chloe gives him a peck, but of course, Lucifer’s kiss is dirty in response, making her gasp in front of everyone once his tongue breaches past her lips.

“Get it, Decker" Mazikeen comments from further down the table, while Ella whistles in agreement. Chloe pulls back and gently pushes Lucifer away until he resumes his previous position, grinning to himself. She doesn’t want them to be one of those couples who make everyone uncomfortable around them with their excessive PDA, but to say Lucifer is a fan of it would be an understatement.

And ever since the auction, he is… well. Let’s say joking and getting high aren't his only ways of coping, and Chloe is only human. Pierce (she still can’t call him Cain in her mind) was a lifetime ago, then Eve came along, then total demon mayhem, then Hell. Ever since they got together, she’s under some sort of spell. But deep down, it breaks her heart to realize how touch-starved Lucifer is, especially now.

_She wakes with a start in the middle of the night, shocked by a sharp jolt of pain to her ribs, right under her right breast. When she opens her eyes where she’s lying on her side in her bed, Lucifer is tossing and turning next to her, his arms and legs moving around as if to fight off someone, his breath harsh and quickened – a now recurring nightmare of a beating gone wrong, or maybe he dreams of getting away when he couldn’t; Chloe doesn’t ask, doesn’t need to know as long as she’s there to stop it._

_She manages to duck from another blow and shifts sideways until she’s pressed against him, blocking his wrists with her hands. It’s a good thing the wings are not out this time, because it’s much more difficult to get close to him without getting cut by the sharp upper feathers or be heard over the sound they make when they flap wildly, seemingly with a mind of their own, as they imagine breaking free of a glass case and chain._

_“Lucifer!” she calls him, loudly. His eyes open immediately, panicking, before he relaxes in her grip._

_“I’m sorry, did I wake you?” he asks, still panting, because of course, that’s what he worries about._

_“Yeah, you- you kind of hit me by mistake.”_

_“What? Where?” he sits up, alarmed, scanning the lenght of her pyjama-covered body with frantic eyes._

_Chloe regrets being so honest, but at this point she has to let him know, so she points at the spot._

_“Here, but don’t worry, it’s nothing.”_

_Lucifer reaches down with one shaky hand and lifts her top gently to peek. Chloe doesn’t know what he’s seeing because she’s too focused on his face. He lies down again, but further down the bed, and kisses her ribs as one arm curls around her other side. She sighs, cards her fingers through his hair, accepting an apology she wasn’t even asking for._

_“I'm sorry" he whispers, peppering kisses around the general area she directed him to. He noses higher along her skin, mouth following in the wake, tracing the lower curve of her breast as his face pushes the fabric higher, exposing her nipple. It’s enough to make a jolt of arousal shoot through her, but she hesitates, realizing with guilt that she forgot all about what was happening to him a moment ago._

_“Lucifer, I- I don’t think this is what you need right now.”_

_“Please" he says brokenly, fingers squeezing at her hip. “Please, Chloe.”_

_And she doesn’t like him begging, not like this, so she takes his face in her hands, guides it to hers and kisses him. He lets out a relieved exhale and melts into her, pressing his body down, then trails his lips down her neck and completely loses himself in that frenzied way he does sometimes, pushing her top further upwards to take her nipples into his mouth like an animal dying of thirst lapping at the last raindrops left on the leaves of the trees after a thunderstorm._

_His mind wanders easily when she’s the one pleasuring him; this, instead, gives him a focus he rarely applies to anything else. So when he moves down, Chloe lets him, gripping his hair tightly to let him know she’s here with him, arching up toward the heat of his mouth between her legs so he can gently press her hips down with his arm and feel in control._

_She comes with the overwhelming urge to carry him down with her, down to a place where it’s only them and no one can hurt him._

In the present, in the backyard where they sit, Linda asks Amenadiel what was his sentence in the Silver City, what was decided by the jury of their angelic siblings. One century of exile, he says, which Chloe assumes isn’t technically a lot for immortals, plus Amenadiel doesn’t seem too bothered by it.

“But if you still want Charlie to go visit, Azrael promised me she’ll meet me outside the gates to take him inside and show him around" he reassures Linda. Chloe reminds herself to ask Lucifer more about this Azrael, this little sister they both seem very fond of but never talk about; the one she promised to take care of Lucifer for. Somehow, it goes unspoken that you don’t break a promise made to the angel of Death, and Chloe has no intention to.

“I can’t believe they’re really taking a shot at democracy up there" Lucifer comments, his joint almost reduced to a stub between his index and middle finger. “If I didn’t know any better I'd say Dad is getting soft.”

“Yup, still weird" Dan comments, both of his hands tapping on the table in a gesture of finality.

“What is?” Maze chuckles around the rim of her bottle. Dan waves his hands in the air vaguely, somehow trying to encompass Lucifer, Amenadiel and the whole expanse of the sky above them.

“You know, the whole God-is-their-actual-Dad… thing.”

“Oh, _that_” Maze teases him, then licks her lips and grins. “Can’t imagine how you'd take it if you met my mother, then.”

They all laugh at the way Dan’s eyes widen, and when Chloe sneaks a peek at Lucifer, she sees fondness in his gaze, and gratitude. For what they did, maybe, or for the simple fact that they are here, that neither Chloe nor Dan ran for the hills after seeing him in the alley.

Chloe can’t speak for Dan, but for her, running isn’t an option anymore. She ran one time too many, and too far, and God knows they payed harsh consequences for it. After seeing what those people wanted to reduce Lucifer to – a trophy, an artifact on a shelf, a private supply of divine light – she wants nothing more than for him to be what he is, this creature fueled by the very entity that made the universe, by forces she can’t even begin to comprehend.

She’s done wishing for him to be _normal_, ordinary, unproblematic, easy to deal with, as simple to understand as any human, because he isn’t one. She wants the heavenly light and the hellish fire, the soft white feathers and the red nightmarish skin; she wants everything, because he _is_ everything, every human emotion, strength and weakness multiplied tenfold by the sheer power of his being.

During a pause in the conversation, Trixie walks back to the table with Charlie in her arms and goes to deposit him in Linda’s lap. Then she scans the space around her and seems to take a very specific decision. When she starts walking back around, Chloe doesn’t manage to stop her in time before she throws her arms around Lucifer's neck from behind.

Lucifer almost jumps out of his skin, and not in that get-away-from-me-offspring way he used to do. He startles easily, now, every touch like a spark of electricity if he doesn’t see it coming. It might seem absurd to diagnose the Devil with PTSD, but Linda told her it’s basically what this is, although not in an extremely severe way. Chloe only asks what’s needed for her not to trigger him, careful not to intrude into their doctor-patient dynamic. Lucifer’s scars are gone from his body (for which Chloe is glad, because she couldn’t stand to see the scraping around his neck, the feathers bent and twisted at odd angles where the chain had almost cut into them) but he has new ones inside, and she knows she’ll need help to heal them.

Around the table, there is a collective intake of breath. Chloe has all the intentions of scolding Trixie, because she _told_ her, plain and simple, never to catch him by surprise (Maze had to be properly educated by a way gentler and more patient Linda instead, who somehow managed to teach the concept of respecting personal boundaries to a demon). But then, Lucifer relaxes and turns around slightly to peer at Chloe’s daughter, swiftly putting out the last part of the joint on one corner of his plate.

“What’s this for, urchin?” he asks, looking down at her arms around his neck. Trixie shrugs and gives him a knowing smile.

“You just looked like you needed it” she says, squeezing for a moment before releasing him to go and sit on the chair she left vacant next to her father. Chloe and Dan exchange a proud little smile at how endearingly perceptive she can be.

“I suppose I did" Lucifer whispers to himself, surprised but grateful.

Chloe would like to think all loose ends have been taken care of, but it’s not true. Most of the potential buyers were not even American, and after how the auction ended, they probably left for their countries with a knowledge of the divine they don’t know what to do with. Hopefully nothing bad, but just in case, Lucifer had an alarm system installed and the service door downstairs reinforced. And of course, the penthouse has been swept clean of Dylan’s bugs by a private company.

Still, Chloe knows new threats will always be lurking in the shadows to take advantage of the Devil’s weakness. A weakness that is _her_, any part of her, and that he _still_ won’t shy away from, stubborn in loving her as he’s stubborn in everything else.

And Lucifer probably is at his most vulnerable now, navigating a whole new condition to overcome. It will be a long road back to the top, but this time he’s not alone; this time, he has help.

Whenever he falls, now, he’s not met with the cold, hard stone of Hell, but with the warm, soft embrace of his friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap on this whumpy ride! I hope you enjoyed this bittersweet ending with traumatized Luci, who will surely get better soon because he is loved ❤ Huge thanks to all of you lovely people!
> 
> P.S. Imagine the crazy stuff Dylan listened to throughout S4... right?

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Revelation Angel Rescue Team](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21132908) by [RedPony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedPony/pseuds/RedPony)


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